


Where the light shines through

by sabrina



Series: They Haunt Us Still [4]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Legends: New Jedi Order Era - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Blending, Force-Sensitive Finn, Found Family, Gen, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Related, Multi, Rey Solo, The Skywalker/Solo family puts the fun in dysfunctional, Unapologetic Legends characters canonization, Unapologetically adding more Solo kids to the TFA universe, background kylux, universe hopping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-17 01:06:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 58,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11840790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabrina/pseuds/sabrina
Summary: Ren has been reconnected with his lost sister, and a younger brother from a completely different world. They're all Solos, all presumably fighting for the same end to Supreme Leader Snoke, but with wildly different personal histories, motivations, and perspectives on the Force. Will those differences be a fracture that weakens them? Or can they unite together and bring the galaxy back into balance?





	1. Anakin

**Author's Note:**

> And... conclusion. Let's get this show on the road! I have the next three chapters drafted, and I'm going to try to continue mostly focusing on writing, but will try to do some edits and post every week and a half or so. But the next month is going to be the best time for me to get through some of these chapters because I anticipate October being murder on my time to write, so I'm really going to focus on trying to get writing out. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you to everyone that has stuck with me through my indulgence of bringing my baby Solo into canon. I hope you guys enjoy!

Anakin Solo sat on stones, centuries old, and worn with the passing of multiple generations of Hapan royals. His eyes were closed while the wind gently blowing through chestnut brown hair. He could reach out into the Force and feel the life surrounding them in this place. From the leaves and flowers and artistically planted trees in the Hapan gardens to the life of those who were sleeping in the palace Anakin could feel all of it in a vibrant heady dance that delighted his soul. It filled his spirit with a hopefulness he'd been struggling to hold onto in the past few days. Grounding himself into this place and into this moment felt life affirming - a reminder that he was here, the Force was with him, and that he could yet listen to the whispers within it. There were a multitude of whispers. Sometimes they were competing. 

Don't get too distracted by this. Be present. Be still. Listen. 

Within the vibrant thrum of the Force there was also the shadow of darkness. 

Anakin was acquainted enough with darkness, both from his Grandfather - his namesake - and the possibilities of the Dark Side that had followed Anakin throughout his life. More recently the darkness had taken the form of a brother who had been equally trailed by the ghosts of Anakin Skywalker's shadow and it was this brother who was the likely source of that dark shadow this morning. 

Or maybe the shadow was not Ren. Maybe it was something completely different. It was difficult to say for certain. The future was always in motion, always shifting, and Anakin knew he couldn't hold onto any of these whispers and expect them to stay steady. They were just the strands of a thousand conversations, which one would be shaped into matter through his own choices and the choices of others, and the matter would become clear in time. 

For a while he rambled down trails before finally pulling back into himself, centering his emotions, and acknowledging the worry, the fear, and the doubt that he held in the present. There was doubt that what Ren had told them all was true, and there was fear of what would happen if it was not, and there was worry that Ren would discover that Luke was here and that it would spurn him into heinous actions. Each fear was named before Anakin sat them down to declare they held no power over him. And then instead he kindled up hope, and a sort of practical review of the facts, as best as he could anyway. 

This wasn't always something he'd done well. Rushing in and following instinct always felt easier, and Anakin liked to do that - _preferred_ it even. Action meant that he didn't have to spend too much time thinking about those fears or the anger or hate that the seed of fear could plant within him. But that sort of thinking had gotten him into trouble before. In his mind's eye, his Master and friend, Ikrit, was still guiding him, giving him quiet advice: angry steps wearing a rut to the Dark Side, a place his feelings could easily lead him to if he was not intentional about choosing the light. 

The Yuuzhan Vong might be a galaxy away, but Anakin was well aware of the presence of the Dark Side in this galaxy. He'd fought it in the form of a brother he hadn't realized that he had. He knew that it existed in Ren's strange, former (hopefully) Master. The darkness could exist in him - that was a never changing reality - and for all he hoped he understood it better than he once had, there were times he was not certain that was enough. 

A breeze rustled with greater intent across the stone patio and Anakin raised his head and opened his eyes, breathing first in and then out as the stirring of the wind patterns had brought him back into the present moment and away from the river of the Force swirling all around him. 

In front of him was the beauty of the Hapan wilderness. This palace had served Tenel Ka's family for centuries, and it was still a place of escape for the Queen Mother of the Hapan Consortium. She was another face from home, familiar, and yet without any of the history they should have shared. This had become a familiar story in this place, but the familiarity did not make it any easier for Anakin. Tenel Ka's two whole arms stood as a reminder that in this reality Anakin's older brother Jacen had not been her friend, and had not fought with her as children, and Tenel Ka had lost nothing in that non-existent relationship. If she had any relationship with Ren, it remained unclear to Anakin what the nature of that relationship might have once been.

Mountains could be seen in front of him and the edge of a lake that was mostly viewed from the other wing of the palace, and for a moment Anakin lingered in that beauty and in the knowledge that the Force was strong in the life of this place. And then at the edges of his attention he could feel the stirring in the chamber he'd left behind. He drew in one final deep breath and then he turned back to the room he was sharing with his older brother: the source of all that worry and fear. 

Ren had pulled himself to a sitting position on the bed, and he watched Anakin in silence as he approached. Ren's eyes held a multitude, while somehow also managing to feel closed off to Anakin. There had been moments on the way back from Vjun where Anakin had thought perhaps he had a glimpse, but mostly, there were walls and just enough to tell Anakin that there was so much more than Ren would say. 

"Do you meditate in the morning? Or at night?" Anakin asked for something to say as Ren continued to stare at him. 

The other man looked behind Anakin as if seeing something long beyond the open doors. 

"When Snoke asks me to," Ren said finally, although it didn't feel like the truth to Anakin. "And when it annoys Hux." 

Anakin glanced over, and there was a smirk across Ren's somewhat crooked features. For a moment, Anakin thought he saw his father in the glance, but it passed before he could map it to the memory of his father's face. 

"Hux is the General, yes?" Anakin had come across the name in his readings before, but it occurred to him now that of course Ren might have had access to people that high up in the First Order. To his surprise, Ren seemed almost embarrassed.

"Yes, he's the General." 

It occurred to Anakin in the flash of a moment that Ren might have friends among the First Order. Not just access to those high-up, but to consider them colleagues and people that he would fight alongside. It was a strange sensation to wonder what Ren thought of him now that he was here, or of the people that he had left behind. There was an even stranger sense of wondering if there was someone among the First Order for whom Ren might, even if he genuinely had turned to them, be loyal to outside of all other allegiances. 

He chewed his lower lip for a moment as he considered Ren. Why was he thinking this now? Was it something about this conversation? Maybe something about the fact that Ren would be close enough to Hux to know when something might annoy him, and to be interested in doing so. Anakin debated for a moment the importance of chasing this thread.

"You know that though," Ren's dismissal interrupted Anakin's thoughts, as Ren slid his feet over the edge of the bed he was sitting on and stood to his full height - several inches taller than Anakin - and then shrugged. "So you really didn't need that confirmation. You're curious about him."

"You know, floating through my head isn't the best way to win friends and influence people," Anakin dead panned, stepping away from Ren and instead walking across to his bed. 

He pulled off the robe he'd been wearing through the night and instead reached for one of the ivory shirts that was so much like the ones his father had worn. He'd found that he'd been wearing those almost more frequently than anything else. He supposed that there was something about missing his father there and he wondered if Ren had made the association, and then chased that thought around by wondering whether or not he'd read that thought out of his mind.

When Ren didn't say anything Anakin couldn't know for certain one way or another. If the other man was reading these thoughts then he was keeping it to himself. Anakin pulled up his own mental barriers, perhaps a little too late, but it seemed like the easiest way to control what Ren had access to easily in the moment.

"We were co-commanders," Ren offered willingly, as Anakin attached his lightsaber to his belt.

Anakin turned around to look at Ren, surprised by the offering of information, but trying not to show it. Any vulnerability where Ren was concerned surprised Anakin but also gave him some hope that maybe there was truth to what Ren was saying, and if they could connect... 

Anakin watched Ren as he questioned: "He was a General and you were…?" 

"Head of the Knights of Ren. We both worked directly with Snoke and took our orders directly from him," Ren explained quietly. "We fought for prominence in Snoke's attention although I think I always had it because I had the Force and Hux didn't. But Hux's father had helped situate the First Order after the war. He was the head of the stormtrooper development program." 

"The one Finn went through?" 

"Yes, the one the traitor went through." 

Anakin rolled his eyes: "You realize you're now a traitor too so it's ridiculous to call him that." 

"I'm not a traitor. I never devoted myself to the First Order."

"Nor, to my understanding did Finn of his own volition," Anakin countered and then followed it up with a side. "So who or what did have your devotion?" 

"The Force, Snoke, the galaxy Grandfather had wanted to build." 

"And now?" 

Ren swallowed, his neck tightening obviously. He didn't say anything and Anakin allowed him the space to work through anything he might want to say. After the silence stretched on for longer than Anakin thought it would, he reached for his jacket on the end of the bed. 

"You might want to figure that out," Anakin suggested curtly. "Otherwise we may think you're still sending information back to Snoke."

"You already think that." 

"I don't," Anakin turned his attention back to Ren, stepping forward to close the distance between him and his brother. 

"Every one else does, and you should." Ren countered aggressively.

"Why should I? Are you?"

"No." There was a beat and then something flickered in Ren's eyes. Uncertainty. "I don't think so."

Anakin raised an eyebrow, but didn't follow up with another question. 

Ren watched him carefully. "I don't understand why you trust me. You know I killed Han." 

"Yeah, I know," Anakin's voice was tight despite his attempts to keep himself fairly even tempered. "But I figure everyone else is being skeptical. Someone has to offer you some faith. And it may be a stupid thing to do, but here's the thing: You know more about Snoke and the First Order than any of the rest of us. If we're to stop the darkness that's spreading across the galaxy? You could help with that if you choose to. That's worth the risk." 

"The risk that I will turn on you." 

Anakin was silent. 

"I'm not going to." 

"Words are easy," Anakin pointed out, wondering that Ren had felt the need to say them. "You'll have to prove that to all of us." 

"I know that." 

Anakin's gaze stayed steady on Ren's face. The other man looked momentarily vulnerable, but there was a sort of determination within his eyes. That determination might just have to be enough for Anakin to hold onto in a place where there wasn't a lot else. Every practical experience and his own intuition suggested that Ren would betray them. That Ren couldn't just change his whole path so easily. They were bringing Ren into their fold, but it would be easy for him to undo all that they were fighting for.

There was a seed of fear in that practical look at the situation. Perhaps more than a seed of fear - perhaps it was full fledged seedling on its way into a grown plant. Anakin realized that unlike Rey, he had the ability to distance himself from anger over their father's death. He hadn't been on Starkiller, and anyway the Han Solo in this universe would be like the Leia Organa in this universe - not truly his parent in a sense of history or prior relationship. Because of that, he couldn't let the fear take root and stay. The fear could overtake everything else, and while it might be practical or logical to be afraid of what Ren might be here to do, Anakin hadn't gotten through tough situations in the past by being fearful of what might happen. When he had worked alongside a Yuuzhan Vong shamed one through the jungles of Yavin IV there might have always been the fear that the man would turn on him, but it was still the essential thing. This felt the same, and beyond that, it felt essential that Anakin trust him where no one else might be able to. 

"Look," Anakin's gaze flickered across Ren's face. "I'm on your side here. The 'you're going to prove it, and it's not just words' side." 

"Why?" Ren frowned as he met that gaze. 

"Because we're brothers, sort of. And because I think we both know that the weight of Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader's shadow. Maybe not in the same way, because as best I can tell everything here was much different from my world, but we've both of us carried that. I was touched by that darkness before I was even born, and I still dream of it. Maybe I see what I could be in you, I don't know, but I think you're genuine." 

In the silence that followed this Anakin tried not to feel as if he'd said too much, but it seemed important to say to Ren. Birds could be heard outside the window where Anakin had been meditating earlier and on a whim he reached over and touched Ren's arm. "You want to meditate with me tomorrow morning?" 

"No," the word came out almost as if Ren hadn't thought about it at all, and maybe he hadn't for his mouth twisted slightly and he amended: "Maybe. We'll see. What's the plan for today?" 

Anakin pulled a breath in, and pulled his mind into the present rather than allowing it to linger in the past and jump ahead to possible futures. "Food first," he shrugged with a good natured grin, but then he sobered. "We need to figure out what our next steps are going to be. And that'll be - well it should include everyone." 

"Everyone except me," Ren stated flatly. 

Anakin frowned at this. They hadn't included Ren yesterday, and that had felt right then, but it seemed as if they were going to handicap themselves if they didn't include him from here on out. Admittedly, they still didn't have any better idea than they did before of his true allegiances, and Anakin really hadn't sussed this out of him this morning, except to say that he was on his team and that he believed in him. And that belief would have to translate into action. In this case, it felt as if that action might include making certain that Ren was involved. 

"No, everyone, even you," Anakin corrected, making a decision that he hoped the others would support him in. "But first food." Settling his jacket firmly across his shoulders, Anakin headed for the door. "You coming?"

Ren seemed to hesitate and Anakin didn't have to reach into the Force to sense the uncertainty in the other man. But maybe that was his own uncertainty. It was one thing to offer faith in the moment when face to face with Ren and his brother was being more open than not. It was another to offer it, and even fight for others to extend it when it went into situations where if Anakin was wrong it might create deep damage throughout the group and possibly cause deaths. 

But Ren did follow, and Anakin centered himself. He might be wrong. There was that possibility, maybe even a great possibility, but faith was offered precisely in situations where things were uncertain and could not be known. Faith threaded directly into hope, and in this case Anakin was going to hope that his faith would not be proven wrong - that whatever Ren's allegiances in the past, he would continue his devotion to the Force and would be led by the light instead of hiding within the dark. Anakin could do that sort of hope. 

Anakin didn't know where they were supposed to go for food, but he suspected they would find someone eventually who would help guide them. He didn't know that it was going to end up being Tenel Ka Djo, but when they rounded the corner of the massive hallway, it was Tenel Ka that was standing outside the archway near the larger room that they had all met in yesterday. 

"Good morning," she offered, formal, but the smile on her face suggested more friendliness than the formality of tone. "Did you sleep well?"

"We really did," Anakin grinned easily. "Didn't we?" 

Ren shrugged and eventually nodded. "They're nice beds. They always were." 

"Better than what you've had recently." 

"What do you mean by that?" Ren looked over at Tenel Ka, his brow furrowing. 

Her eyebrow raised at him and she tilted her head. "I mean only that if you've been on ships bunks recently, I should assume that the palace beds are significantly more comfortable." 

"Oh," Ren seemed to deflate. He'd clearly been expecting something else, perhaps something with a bit more bite behind it. 

For a moment Tenel Ka watched him, but then she nodded her head towards the main hall. "There is breakfast in the hall. I have had them bring it for all of us, although I did not know what your plans for the day were."

"I think starting with food is a solid plan," Anakin nodded and walked towards the main hall, trying to calm the nerves in his stomach that wondered what would happen when Ren realized Luke was here. "We'll all be in a better place if we start with food." 

"Fact," Tenel Ka seemed bemused, and there was something deeply comforting in the simple, familiar statement, enough so that Anakin relaxed as they entered the space. 

Hope: He was just going to hold onto that hope. 

Breakfast had been laid out on a long table in one of the open rooms that they had passed through yesterday. Tenel Ka walked straight to a buffet that was teaming with hot food, and began to fill her plate. Ren followed her lead and Anakin followed behind the two of them his mind trying to stay close, but he was wondering how this was going to work out. There were dozens of variables here and they still didn't have a strong grasp on what the next step was. Take out Snoke was a good enough direction, but without any map or coordinates or shipping route to lead them there, it was going to be more difficult to do.

He followed Tenel Ka and Ren as they worked their way through the buffet. Anakin kept his thoughts mostly on Snoke, on what they'd learned in their trip and trying to figure out if it would hold any connection at all while he piled his plates with roasted vegetables, eggs, and some fruit that he was pretty certain was specific to Hapes and he hadn't ever tried before. 

Ren was quiet and answered the questions that Tenel Ka directed towards him in near monosyllabic answers, and Anakin didn't try to add to the conversation. 

What they'd learned at Vjun had to be important. They had stumbled accidentally onto the temple after Zayna had simply mentioned that it might exist. They hadn't been looking for it, which had to be the Force at work. It couldn't be mere coincidence could it? He supposed that was a million credit question. After all, there was nothing on the surface of that conversation that seemed to relate to Snoke, or to the First Order. Even really to his grandfather, although Anakin wondered for a moment if there was something there that should be paid attention to. Based on what Ren had said, he'd been spoken to from the time he was very young by someone that he'd come to believe was Vader, and then later, he'd come to believe was Snoke - using Vader's identity to bring Ren to him. Had Rey's kidnapping been part of that, Anakin wondered. A way to exploit the family tragedy to bring Ren further and more sympathetically into 'Vader's' grasp? It seemed possible, but he didn't know enough about Rey's kidnapping. 

Nobody did according to the media attention that had followed the event. It had initially been treated as a political kidnapping. But when no ransom or other contact had happened people had begun to believe that it wasn't purposefully targeted, it had just been a coincidence that it had been Leia Organa's child, freaky but not a part of her political position at all. 

Anakin remained quiet for much of breakfast, speaking only to greet Rey and Finn when they came in. The others kept up a conversation that wasn't precisely cheery, or even that intense, but was enough that Anakin didn't feel that he had to participate, instead remaining mostly lost in thought. As he got ready to leave the room, Tenel Ka came with him, and as they walked outside together she tilted her head at him. 

"Are you always so quiet?" 

He looked over at her and shook his head, a rueful smile pressing to his lips. "Not exactly. I mean I used to be. My best friend, Tahiri Veila, she used to tell me that a bantha had my tongue, and I told her that it was just because she talked enough for both of us." 

He realized as he shared the story that he'd been half hoping that Tenel Ka would pipe up and say that she knew a Tahiri Veila, or had known. It had been name dropping, and there was a weight of disappointment when Tenel Ka showed no particular recognition. If Tahiri were alive in this galaxy, probably she was among the sand people on Tatooine, or she had been at the temple and Tenel Ka had never known her. Anakin pushed back disappointment and turned to look at her. "Life hasn't precisely allowed me to keep my silence much recently, but here there's a lot I don't know and I suppose I'm falling back into old habits when I'm not certain of things."

Tenel Ka glanced down the long corridor in front of them. "Walk with me, Anakin Solo." 

Anakin nodded his head and stuck his hands in his pockets falling into step beside her. There were still so many things that he didn't know about this place. What Tenel Ka's relationship was to any of the people here. She and Mara seemed to know each other, and she seemed to have known Ren, which was perhaps the most interesting piece of information because she would have known him differently than any of the others that Anakin had spoken to him about thus far. She wasn't a parent, or an Aunt or Uncle, or a sibling. She was a contemporary - about the same age more than likely. 

"I met Ben when he was thirteen and I was twelve," she offered, as if reading his mind. "My father was a friend of Luke Skywalker's, having helped him when he was here on Hapes in the months before I was born. My mother, was a witch of Dathomir, but she wanted me to learn a different way. She felt that the Force as taught among her family, was not befitting a Queen of the Hapes Consortium, and so she sent me to Luke and to his Jedi." 

"Had he been there long?" 

"Mm, no," Tenel Ka shrugged. "Maybe a few months. He knew more than I did, but not much," she smirked at this. "He was frequently quiet, but he liked to talk to me, and while I wanted to focus on my training, I found this strange boy that continued to try to speak with me… intriguing. And perhaps, if you will believe it, even sweet." 

Anakin thought of his brother. It wasn't that Ren reminded him of Jacen precisely, but he knew the sort of friendship that Jacen and Tenel Ka had shared at the Praxeum and while he might have categorized it as 'slightly gag worthy' rather than sweet, he suspected that was just his younger brother cred talking. "I believe it," he said looking over at her. "Not that you could see it now so much, but I'd believe he was then." 

"Once he was more comfortable with me, he was less quiet," she smiled. "In fact, if you got him talking about something that he was interested in, he could talk for the better portion of an afternoon without speaking. He did that a few times, and I suppose I indulged him because as ridiculous as it felt to me, it was sweet. We were friends, and while he could speak so readily he always seemed interested in the life I led, and surprised when he learned my family and history." 

"You didn't tell him in this universe either," Anakin interrupted and he shook his head with a chuckle. "Did he mind that you didn't tell him?"

"Not really, no. Well, not after the initial complaining," she smirked. 

They had come to the end of the hallway and it existed into a longer outdoor hall. This was covered, with arches that held up the roof, the view looking out across the lake that settled on the east side of the palace. Tenel Ka didn't stop, she simply turned and continued down the walkway leaving Anakin to follow her. 

"Everything changed after Breha was taken," Tenel Ka turned her head towards Anakin, almost conspiratorial in the way that she was addressing him. "He went from smiling and sharing to serious and sharp. I could see that he was angry, and who wouldn't be? Your sister was taken from your care. I can only imagine how I would take such a thing, and it would not be well." 

Anakin nodded. He bit his lower lip and tilted his head back towards Tenel Ka, curious. "Were you there the night everything was destroyed?" 

"No," Tenel Ka shook her head. "I had returned to my family for a gathering. I always wondered why no one from the group tracked me down. I assumed it was because they had not checked the roster to see who might have been away from the training. But when I learned that it was him, I did wonder. He knew I was there, and he knew I was trained," she stopped, turning to put a hand on one of the stone railings and she looked straight into Anakin's eyes. They were roughly the same height. "He didn't come after me, so he either did not care enough, or did not need to finish the task." 

"Or he was protecting you," Anakin suggested softly. 

Tenel Ka shrugged. "One must consider it as a possible explanation yes. I kept contact with Mara after. She was the only person I knew to contact, and we have spoken multiple times over the years. The Hapes Consortium has not liked outsiders. There were some who thought and hoped, and my mother was one of them - I suspect it is why she sent me to Luke to train - that the Hapes Consortium might finally find its place among the galaxy, but with the destruction of the Jedi, it seemed dangerous to remind anyone who might yet be looking that I existed, so outside of Mara, I folded back into the Consortium and I have stayed here. For the longest time I had assumed Ben also died that night." 

"In a way, he may have," Anakin glanced back in the direction that they'd come. Certainly Ren was not Ben in name, and while the boy that Tenel Ka may have known was still in there somewhere, he didn't seem to be out and easily visible now. 

"Fact," Tenel Ka said quietly. "This new name, Ren?" 

"He says grandfather gave it to him," Anakin shrugged. "In some ways it simply sounds as if he has not give up his Knights of Ren identity. I hope we have not made a terrible mistake in bringing him here." 

"You have not," Tenel Ka said. "If he was alive, that I should need to face him again is absolute. I believe Ben is still there, that boy who was so sweet to me, even if he has been covered in a layer of duracrete. He blamed himself for Rey, even if nobody else did. He thought they blamed him too." 

"Even if they didn't," Anakin offered, frowning. He couldn't say they didn't either. He had no idea. "It must have been difficult." 

"Fact. They were close once." 

"Perhaps they will be again." 

"Perhaps," Tenel Ka seemed less certain, and Anakin had to purposefully hold on to his hope so that it would not slip between his fingers. "Some bridges may not be meant to be mended." 

Anakin frowned and glanced out at the lake. A bird swooped low and seemed to catch up a fish from the water before flying off. "I don't believe this is one of those," he said quietly. "In fact, I think if it isn't mended the galaxy may not survive." 

"That's dramatic," Tenel Ka's face carried a raised eyebrow.

"It is," Anakin agreed amiably. "But there you are." 

"Then you have your task set out for you." 

"We should return to the others," Anakin said suddenly, a restlessness coming over him like a breeze through autumn leaves. "I think it's time for us to start planning. And to tell Luke more specifically what we have found. To know where we go next." 

"You have a plan?" Tenel Ka queried. 

"Only the beginnings of one," Anakin couldn't quite keep a sigh from following this. It wasn't exactly the confident leader that he'd aspire to be, but this was a different situation from home, and there were so many variables he didn't understand. He couldn't rush in without details no matter how much he might want to do that. "If it can even be called that. But it's also not going to write itself." 

Tenel Ka's lips turned up in what might have been a smirk: "Fact."

Anakin gave her a lopsided grin. "You've no idea how good it is to hear that from you. It feels like home even if this is all different." 

"I hope we will be friends here," Tenel Ka turned her gaze to him. 

"Yeah, I do too," Anakin nodded. 

They turned back down the walkway, and Anakin headed back towards the breakfast area. He didn't know if Finn, Rey, Ren or any of them would still be there, but he was beginning to realize that they were going to have to get through a number of things together before they could really push through to a plan. The sooner they began those things then the sooner they could hopefully take out Snoke which would free Ren and assist the Resistance. It seemed like the best course of action, but Anakin still wasn't certain how to put all the pieces together, or where Snoke might be, or whether Ren would be willing to help them - although that he was beginning to think was more likely if for no other reason than Ren seemed furious at having believed that he was following his grandfather when it was actually Snoke. 

They weren't in the breakfast room, but he did find them in a small alcove near that room. The alcove was more a patio than it was a meeting space. He supposed this was the brilliant part of meeting in the palace like this. It was a retreat rather than a military base and that was evident in every room. The closest to a 'business' like meeting space had been the one they'd met in shortly after arriving. The dining spaces, public areas, the large walkways covered and some not, the bedrooms - all of it was luxurious and spacious and perhaps it would inspire creativity in all of them. 

"Anakin, hey," Finn greeted him as they stepped into the room and Anakin offered a smile in greeting. 

"I figured we should talk about what's next. We've done some of this, but as pretty as it is here, we can't just stay here as if it's a vacation. If for no other reason than it's possible the First Order would find us eventually." 

"They would have to get through our fleets first," Tenel Ka noted, taking a seat next to Ren. 

"They would, but I'd rather not test out who has the strongest one," Anakin replied. "Would you?" 

"If we can take Snoke off guard it'd be preferable anyway," Rey remarked. "But do we really want Ren here during this?"

Ren had been watching Tenel Ka, but now he looked up, his face largely unreadable. "You can't keep me from knowing what you're talking about." 

"Wanna bet?" Rey snapped back at him. "You never could break down my mental defenses." 

"Hey," Anakin raised a hand. "Here's the thing though - we're going to have to decide where we take a risk. Are we going to take a risk on him so that we have the possibility of his insight into the First Order and what might bring Snoke down, or are we going to relegate him to some security chamber?" 

"We don't even know that he wants to help us," Finn pointed out. "He says so, but there's no proof one way or another. He's here, and he hasn't tried to get away yet, but that doesn't mean anything. It just means he hasn't tried anything yet. He could be waiting for the right moment. Rey's right to be worried and you're a little bit too trusting, Anakin." 

Anakin pulled in a breath and swallowed a sigh. He understood the reluctance, he did, but he also knew that they needed Ren. Or… he didn't know it, he believed it. It was like he'd told Tenel Ka - he very much felt that the winning of this was going to be in Ren helping them and being able to bridge the gap between the two siblings. It was a gap that had started in a wedge from Darth Vader, it was unfinished business in a manner of speaking, but Anakin couldn't force Rey or Finn to trust Ren, and frankly there was a part of him that acknowledged that them remaining skeptical of Ren's turning was probably a good thing in the sense that it kept him questioning and on his toes. 

"You're right," he looked at them. "I mean, I wouldn't go with too trusting, but I do have faith that Ren's telling us the truth." 

"But you can't prove that." 

"Faith is never something you can prove," Anakin shook his head. "It always has to be something you believe, without evidence, something unseen. Eventually I'll be proven right or wrong probably, Or maybe I'll never be 'proven' right, exactly, but the evidence that I might be wrong will never show itself. I can't force anyone else to feel the same way I do, or to look at this the same way, but I believe that Ren's here because he wants to make amends." 

"Actually I want revenge," Ren said dryly.

Finn and Rey exchanged glances. 

Anakin glared at his older brother and Ren shrugged, obviously enjoying the fact that he'd undermined Anakin's whole spill with a simple statement. There was something very like their father in the gesture and for a moment Anakin could have almost believed Han was there out of the corner of his eye. He wondered if Ren was aware of how like Han the gesture was. 

"Fine, he wants revenge, but for our purposes, those two things align."

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," Tenel Ka remarked coolly. 

"Yes, that," Anakin nodded. 

Ren smirked. "I don't want to see Snoke alive, and I never cared particularly about the First Order. They were a means to an end, and Snoke was their head not me. I get that you don't want to trust me, but if you want to destroy Snoke, so do I."

"Still just words," Finn muttered.

"Words are all we're going to have until we make a plan and enact it," Anakin looked over at Finn. 

"And then it's too late if he stabs you in the back," Finn stated. "Believe me I have some experience with that and it's not fun." 

Rey's hand slid over Finn's. 

Ren looked up at Rey. "I never wanted to hurt you. Even before. Why would I want to hurt you now?" 

"Because you've been all Dark Side Evil Guy?" Finn raised an eyebrow. 

Ren rolled his eyes and had the entire conversation been less serious Anakin would have laughed. It was such a juvenile gesture, and such a sibling sort of conversation, like something he might have had with his sister and brother before the Yuuzhan Vong arrived, only with a great deal more weight. 

"Fact," Tenel Ka tilted her head in Ren's direction. 

Ren turned to look at her as if she'd betrayed him somehow. 

Tenel Ka offered evidence unphased: "You have been fighting for the First Order. You have been following someone who is intrigued with the Dark Side, and it is obvious on you. It feels like death even. They are right to be cautious. Particularly since you have not precisely denounced the Dark Side, only Snoke." 

"I'm not a Jedi, and I'm not obsessing over the light either," Ren was pulling back into himself and whatever good mood he might have had before from Rey's conversation seemed to have disappeared. "You don't know anything about me." 

"No, because you have not bothered to keep in touch, Ben Solo." 

Ren's jaw tightened, his fingers grasping the edge of the cushion and clasping until his knuckles turned white. 

"I think we can pretty much all assume that anyone who doesn't trust Ren is a rational person. But that doesn't change the fact that we are going to have to trust him to move forward if we wish his help. But I don't think we can do it alone." 

"I believe Anakin may be right there." 

Ren's head jerked up at the voice and then stood up, his face suddenly paler than normal. 

Anakin turned towards the voice and in the archway Luke stood, Mara directly to his side, and just behind him. Anakin knew her well enough to know that it would take only an instant's wrong move and she'd be between Luke and whoever was attacking him. But it wasn't just Mara, Rey and Finn had stepped in between Luke and Ren as well and Tenel Ka had stood albeit more slowly, her eyes were quietly on Ren. 

Ren's words landed somewhere between a snarl and a wounded yelp: "What are you doing here?"


	2. Ren

"What are you doing here?" 

Ren hadn't even intended to ask the question but it had come out anyway, bubbling up to the surface like hot lava - a tiny surge of the heat that was building beneath the surface. There was a beat as he realized that nobody else seemed surprised that Luke Skywalker had walked into the room, which could indicate only they'd known that he was here and nobody had told him. Not Rey or the Traitor, and not even Anakin. 

"You knew -" he muttered forcefully. Then he stalked towards the door behind Luke. 

It should not have been a surprise when he was blocked by Mara Jade. For a moment his hand lifted, the intention to actually use the Force against her large and likely, and then he stopped. 

Something in the back of his mind screamed that if he did this that would be the end of whatever it was he was trying to do here. He would have forced himself into a particular line of action and there would be no coming back from it. He stared at her, tense and frustrated, but he kept control. He couldn't take on Snoke by himself and he knew that much. He would need others in the room even as he hated the reality of that. 

"Sit down, Ben." Luke suggested. 

Ren didn't move, his cheek twitched, but he wasn't going to respond to 'Ben'. If they all knew Luke was here then surely someone had filled Luke in and if they hadn't done so then they could do so now and someone else could do it. Ren had informed Luke of enough things in the past, or tried to do so, and rarely had it gone well for him.

"Ren." 

This was Rey's voice from behind him, and for once it didn't sound like it was about to bite into him. He turned, his gaze finding hers and locking onto it. He could feel that she wanted him to sit down. There was a question that ran through his brain about why he hadn't been able to feel Luke here, but then again, perhaps that was tied into the larger question about how he hadn't been able to find Skywalker all this time. It was a reminder that he'd failed Snoke in that particular activity, and while at the moment, he could care less that Snoke didn't have the information, there was still that lingering reminder that he'd failed and he hated the sense of worthlessness that came with it.

"Ren, we're all here for the same reason - to defeat Snoke." 

Ren doubted that his younger brother was correct about the 'same reason'. He could care less about any sort of return to the light that might accompany such a defeat, but Anakin wasn't wrong that Ren did want to see Snoke brought to his knees. And indeed it was what had pulled him to a stop against Mara. There was a deep anger underneath the surface at what had been done. Snoke had deliberately tricked him in ways that required intention. Ren wondered if the release of his grandfather's identity had been something Snoke had influenced as well or if that had just been a happy coincidence that it had happened when it did. It had been essential in bringing him to Snoke, but would Snoke have known that? 

The reality of the moment though, was that he was probably stuck unless he wished to fight his way out and that wasn't something he wanted to try to do. Outside of the numbers, it wouldn't help him achieve anything. Whether he liked it or not, his ability to get revenge on Snoke was probably dependent upon his being able to work with Anakin and Rey. They were both powerful in the Force and Ren knew it. The thought that had stopped him before, still held. It made sense, logically, to work with them so long as their intentions were in alignment. Anakin was right that at least in this one thing regarding Snoke they were aligned.

Luke's voice broke the silence again: "Why are you here, Ren?" 

The preternatural calmness of his Uncle's voice was one of those things that Ren would never feel comfortable with. Sometimes it seemed to be a challenge just to try to get Luke Skywalker to break his mask - to lose his temper, to become angry, because he didn't always feel quite human. Ren wondered if he'd been more emotional back in the day? Rey had certainly lost her temper with Ren, and he'd seen Anakin display anger as well. Neither of his siblings seemed lost amongst a lack of personality and Anakin at least claimed the title of Jedi readily.

He raised his eyes, his gaze focusing in on his Uncle's face. It was older than the last time Ren had seen him, but of course it was. It had been years since he'd seen Luke, and much of that time he'd been looking for Skywalker because Snoke had wanted to see him. Luke looked as smug as ever in Ren's opinion, still unnaturally calm and waiting him out. Ren's jaw tightened. Let him wait. 

Silence weighed heavily in the room like too much humidity holding them all stagnant.

Ren felt a bit as if he were a teenager again. Despite the realization that he'd made a decision about what he was going to do - i.e., not fight - it still felt as if it were something that had been forced on him, not something he'd decided. It was that same old feeling of not being in control of his own destiny. It was something that Snoke had played on, the idea that he could control it, not that Ren had always felt as if he were in control of his destiny over the past few years, but it had been more the case… until it had all fallen apart out from under him and he'd been left questioning whether the control he'd gathered was held by someone else's rope and not his own at all. 

"Ren, look," Rey broke the silence, leaving her words feeling harsh in the room even if they were not overly so in tone. "You've got to talk to us. We… want to trust you, but you have to give us something to go on. The last time we were together, you tried to kill me, so…" 

"I didn't try to kill you," this wrongful accusation pulled words to Ren's mouth and he turned to look intensely at Rey. "I never tried to kill you. I was offering you a chance to come with me." 

"Which I didn't want to do," Rey pointed out. "Which kind of led me to believe that you were trying to kill me." 

"No," the knife of her certainty that this was what he had been attempting hurt more than he wanted to admit.

At times, he could still see the little sister that he only wanted to protect. And when he'd thought that it was her, maybe could be her, it had only been his desire to get her back, to protect her from Snoke, to maybe together form a destiny where they could both take what their grandfather had tried to do and build it. In the hours prior to the destruction of Starkiller, there had been the beginnings of hope for a future that had involved Hux, Ren, and Rey at the head of a new Empire - a strong galaxy, safe, secure for everyone in it, and together Ren could stand with these two people who had both mattered to him. 

Right now, it felt like a child's dream. Of course it never made any sense that Rey and Hux would come to work together, and probably, even had Rey come with him and accepted his offer, this would have been true. A triad would have eventually torn itself apart. Still the idea lingered. Hux his emperor, his physical comfort, and the man he would do anything to protect. Breha his sister and comrade, and together they would make Hux's -- and beyond that -- their grandfather's dreams a reality for the galaxy.

"I believed that Grandfather was calling me out," he spoke suddenly. If he thought about it too much he never would speak, so he vocalized those that were there - hot and impulsive and not daring to think about the consequences of using them. He turned to Luke. He didn't want to tell him anything, didn't want to give him any ammunition, but recognized that Rey was right and that he did willingly put himself in the hands of people who were ideologically opposed to him and did so out of a desire for personal revenge -- what was he thinking? 

What would Hux think? That Ren had turned against him and betrayed him? Maybe he did, in a way, although it wasn't about Hux, or the First Order. Ren's loyalty was never consistently to the First Order. Hux's soldiers were tools to help him achieve the galactic vision that he believed his Grandfather had wanted. And fighting for what Hux wanted was a desire that had curled into his chest only recently, barely admitted to as he continued to push back against that idea verbally in every encounter with Hux. Hux maybe had no idea of how Ren thought about him when darkness fell and the stars could be seen, or how much Ren had begun to use Hux as one of those stars, a navigational chart built around a hope that felt foolish now. 

"I thought it was Grandfather all this time -- the voice I heard in my head. I didn't know when I was younger, I thought it was… I tried to ignore it, and then I learned about Grandfather and it became more clear. I believed it was Grandfather, and that he wanted me to do what he'd been unable to. So I did." 

"Why are you here now if you thought you were doing what Anakin Skywalker wanted?" 

Luke's face was still eerily calm. It made Ren feel guilty, and that guilt was barricaded by anger as he looked at his Uncle. His emotions were nothing to be ashamed of, they never had been, and why should he be made to feel guilty for something he did not even believe was wrong anymore? Even if he learned that what he felt was truth might be a lie, that did not change that he was not a Jedi and would never be a Jedi no matter what side he was fighting for or against. He allowed that anger at Luke to be instead funneled into disdain for Snoke: "Because Grandfather _did_ talk to me. It wasn't him. Because I was lied to and Snoke needs to be destroyed for that." 

"Revenge." 

"Yes, revenge," Ren sneered at his Uncle. "I know that's too low an emotion for a Jedi, but I want to see Snoke destroyed, which, as Anakin has already pointed out is what you all want as well." 

"Don't put words into my mouth, Ben." 

"It's Ren!" The words burst forth angrily, and Ren turned on his Uncle with a furious expression on his face. "Ren. Kriff it. I will not answer to Ben and I am not that name any longer, and if you want me to work with you, then you can have the decency to call me what I wish to be called." 

The anger seemed to have no impact on Luke which only infuriated Ren further but he didn't act on that anger, instead pulled his breath in tight in a hiss and held himself completely still while he glared from underneath dark eyebrows at the older man. The insistence of Luke in believing that he knew something of who Ren was now, or how he should best think about himself was a sort of arrogance that seemed terribly hypocritical now. Ren could see the hypocrisy so clearly, but doubted that Luke had any notion of it. Luke probably felt he was in the right, and it intensified the frustration boiling in Ren's stomach. 

"We all believe that if Snoke is no longer controlling the First Order, that it will be easier to defeat," Anakin stepped forward, carefully taking a place between Ren and Luke. "Right? We all believe that. And Ren you have no particular desire to see the First Order win now, yes?" 

The question was more complicated than Ren wanted to get into in the middle of all of these people. Hux's face hung in his mind. The way his eyes looked blown wide when Ren pleasured him. There were loyalties there that he hadn't shared to anyone and he didn't want to share in a room full of people. "Grandfather - the one that spoke to me in his fortress - would not support the First Order." 

That felt safe to say, and it was the sort of thing that they would all want to hear. Ren could give them that knowing that it would get him closer to what he wanted - Anakin and Rey's help in pulling Snoke apart piece by piece. And then he could determine the next step. It was always possible that he could tell Hux that he had discovered that Snoke needed to be destroyed, that his plans for the First Order were counter to what Hux believed, and that Ren had pretended to work alongside the others to achieve this goal, but he was back now, back to be Hux's enforcer, and together they could take their vision for the galaxy and build it. 

With that plan in his mind, Ren simply nodded. "Snoke is my current mission." 

"The Resistance can continue to fight the First Order," Anakin pointed out quietly. "They've been doing that, even as the First Order has grown bolder, but we, all of us, are uniquely qualified to work on the Snoke question. Ren knows things we don't and that could help us remove Snoke from his ability to assist the First Order, or at the very least distract him to give the Resistance a better chance." 

Ren could tell that this speech, however rational it might seem to him, wasn't something that Luke believed. Of course Luke would be more worried with the motivation behind what Ren wanted to do than with the action itself. This was the entire reason he had left. The sort of inauthentic pretense of being one thing, with the risk of losing all practical sense of what must be done. Ren was never interested in the Force as something that must be danced around. It was there to be used, and things needed to be done, you couldn't pretend that just because you held some greater power that you were not uniquely qualified to do things that would improve things around you. That wasn't how it worked. 

He looked over to Anakin, and watched the other boy's face. It was eerie to him just how much Anakin looked like Han. Eerie, and it also pressed against emotions that Ren didn't really want to feel. It was a reminder of the bridge, of Starkiller, and of the questions that popped up when he thought of Han. Snoke had been so insistent that he would need to lose things in his past, and Han Solo had felt like the obvious symbol of that. 

That had been then. 

Now? 

"Anakin's right," he wasn't certain if his agreeing with Anakin would help him with Luke, but hopefully it would help him with Anakin and at the moment, oddly, his younger brother felt like the one he needed to have allied with him. "Everyone in this room is Force sensitive. We all have powers the Resistance doesn't have, and most of the First Order either for that matter. Snoke is our responsibility. Particularly mine. I helped to prop him up within the First Order. That's why I'm here." 

"You will need to search your feelings," Luke began. 

"No, I don't need to kriffing search my feelings. I'm not meditating on the Force, or seeking the light," Ren snapped at his Uncle. "I'm here to do a job, same as everyone else. That's why I'm here - not to become a Jedi. I'm not interested in repentance and I don't need it." 

Next to him Ren could feel a flare of irritation from Rey but he ignored it. 

"If he's going to help us, then what's our next step?" Rey seemed to also be ignoring the source of the irritation. Ren wasn't certain exactly where it was streaming from anyway, but it seemed that right now at least, he had both Anakin and Rey on his side. They were both more practical than Luke, willing to throw in with him if they could accomplish a goal, and allow the other pieces to sort where they were. Life was exceedingly easier when you weren't constantly worrying about some mystical galactic balance of light and dark.

"We go after Snoke." 

Mara's words brought a burst of practicality that was at once not surprising and also welcome. 

Ren didn't take his gaze from Luke's face. He was too interested in the man's response to this. He wondered if it was a betrayal, or simply an accepted expectation.

"From here directly?" Tenel Ka raised an eyebrow and looked at Ren specifically. 

"We can hardly take him back with us to the Resistance," Rey pointed out with a shrug. "I think we do as much as we can from here, and then move from here. Even if it's only to another location for information, but we can't take him back to the Resistance - someone will surely recognize him." 

"Maybe not," Mara shrugged. "Most people believe that Ben Solo died with others, and Kylo Ren was always masked. There's nothing to tie Ren specifically to Kylo Ren, other than the name." 

Ren could feel the question that moved through the room. The question of whether or not he was really safe when he continued to deny the name Ben and embrace part of the name he'd had before. 

"Grandfather said I should keep it," Ren muttered. "Ren, I mean." He left out the fact that Anakin had also told him to look into the Mandalorian names and history. He'd told his brother this, and that was enough. Luke and the others didn't need to know that too. "It suits me better." 

This seemed true to Ren. Ben felt like trying to fit into clothing he might have worn at fifteen. Impossible, and terribly uncomfortable even if it were managed. And while Kylo Ren didn't seem right to keep when it was a name that had been given to him by Snoke, Ren continued to feel like home and as familiar as the garments he'd worn over the past few years. Hux had nearly always called him Ren. When his grandfather had told him to keep it there had been no question that he would. 

"This is a moot point in many ways," Anakin shrugged. "If we take him back, regardless, we have to determine what we're saying, are we telling the whole truth? A partial truth? Are we trusting people who might know the truth to not tell leadership? It's something mother would have to deal with, and none of that will help the problem in front of us. I think we work from here." 

Ren hadn't even considered Leia. Despite himself, his gaze fell to the ground, and his frown furrowed his dark brows together. Leia had felt Han's death. Ren had known that. It had been quiet and quick and a flash that he'd quickly pushed away in the anger of the moment and as he'd pulled all of that anger into the very immediate and in front of him path of retrieving Rey and bringing her back with him to do training. If they went after Snoke, then he could avoid that confrontation. Avoid whatever pain would inevitably be in his mother's eyes. Avoid knowing exactly how much he hurt her, and the question of whether or not she would want to ever see him again. Perhaps she wouldn't… or perhaps he could pretend to be someone completely different. 

He brushed off these ridiculous notions, and instead looked straight at Luke. "We go after Snoke. I will share what I can to see him destroyed." 

Luke didn't flinch - at least not exactly, but Ren could still tell that he was not comfortable with what was being pulled together. 

"How do we know your information means anything?" Finn hadn't spoken, but now, the skepticism in the whole conversation weighed heavily in his voice. "You've been a part of the First Order, fighting alongside Hux, who is a monster, and the First Order, who kills innocents without thinking about it - just pull a trigger, blow up five planets - a whole system. That's who you've been with, for whatever personal reasons you've given yourself to allow yourself to be all right with that atrocity. And now you're sitting here saying you want revenge on a guy who betrayed you personally, and sure, that's the same guy we'd like to see out of the picture, so enemy of my enemy and all that shit, but you're still a monster - you're still in it for revenge, I don't get why we can trust you suddenly." 

Ren couldn't help the roll of his eyes to accompany this monologue. "We both want the same thing, Traitor." 

"You can stop calling me that -- It's Finn. And you're talking about betraying the Supreme Leader, so you're as much a traitor as I am... Traitor." 

Rey's hand went to Finn's while Ren pulled his emotions up tight and glared at the former Stormtrooper. 

"We have a choice on whether or not we want to trust his information," Anakin's words echoed the calm in Luke's voice. 

"If he's lying, he's going to be feeding back everything we do to the First Order, and possibly Snoke," Rey pointed out as Finn nodded. 

"I've already told you I'm not feeding information to Snoke," Ren snapped irritably. 

"You don't get to be upset that nobody trusts you when you've done nothing to prove you are trustworthy," Mara spoke up for the first time in a long while. 

Ren contemplated the likelihood of stealing a Hapan vessel and going after Snoke on his own, but he knew Snoke well enough to know, or to believe, that he wouldn't succeed on his own. He buried the desire for the moment. Like it or not, to accomplish his current mission he needed at least Rey and Anakin, which meant he needed to somehow get them to trust him. 

"Fine, but I'm not," he repeated, feeling churlish and petulant and hating his total lack of control in the current situation. 

"I think we should come to back to this later," Luke was watching Anakin as he said this, which led Ren to turn his gaze to his younger brother as well. Anakin seemed to be considering this and it almost felt as if Anakin and Luke were having a whole conversation that didn't involve anyone else in the room, although maybe that was just Ren's own insecurity speaking. Surely if they were capable of doing that in the Force he would be able to pick up on it. 

"Tomorrow then." Tenel Ka's voice was unemotional. "We should begin to put together the beginnings of a plan, and move forward tomorrow." 

"You're going to be helping us?" Rey looked over at the red-haired queen. 

"My help is limited, but I can offer some support." 

"Tomorrow morning after breakfast," Anakin stated decisively. "We'll meet here, and we'll move forward together."

As the others begin to stand, Ren watched them in silence, his gaze floating to Luke to watch him. If the Jedi Master noticed, he didn't seem to pay any heed to it, making Ren irritably wonder if he could take the Jedi if they were in a one-on-one fight. He had grown after all. Had he surpassed his one-time master? 

"Am I free to do whatever?" he asked suddenly, pulling his attention away from Luke and back to the others. "I don't have to stay in my room?" 

Anakin and Rey exchanged glances. It was Mara who spoke: "You should have someone with you at all times, Ren. As is very clear right now, we have no particular reason to trust you and until that changes, you don't get alone time." 

"I'm not a child." Ren narrowed his eyes. "All I want to do is take a walk around the palace. I'm not going anywhere. I want to see Snoke destroyed and you'll all help with that." 

"If you want a walk, I can give you a tour," Tenel Ka stepped up beside him. 

Ren glanced sideways to her face. She was shorter than he remembered her being, but of course he'd grown a bit since he'd seen her last. It wasn't exactly what he'd wanted - he really wanted the opportunity to think alone for the first time since he'd been on his own ship on the way to Vjun - but as companions went, Tenel Ka seemed the least likely to push into his thoughts in a way he was uncomfortable with. 

"Fine," he shrugged, knowing his ability to bully his way through the situation without negative consequences simply didn't exist. He glanced around the room before he stalked off towards the door. 

He could feel Tenel Ka following him, and he wondered what she was thinking. It didn't matter, but maybe that was easier than trying to think anything himself. After years apart, and a world of changes, what would she think of him now? They'd been friends once, a fact that made this situation both spiked with anxiety, and also a bit of a relief. At least she wasn't family. If she was disappointed in him, it would take a different tact and she would likely feel less requirement to either be shaming or accepting. 

Ren didn't speak as he headed down the long hall towards the outside walkway. Tenel Ka didn't add anything to the silence either, instead she kept pace quietly beside him, and her thoughts were largely her own, even when Ren reached out to try to touch her mind. He'd been good at that once, memories drifting back in despite himself as they began down a long walkway that framed the entire palace. This one was open to the air, with large arches repeating the distance down towards the stairs that would lead down to the patios around the open lake. 

Hapan scenery was breath-taking, and it had been so long since Ren had been anyplace so beautiful as this. At least, anyplace so unassumingly beautiful. Starkiller had its own beauty certainly, and Ren had been to other planets with beauty, but it had always been something starker, or something less obvious. Nothing that would remind him of Naboo, for instance, or even Chandrila. Thinking back on the memories of training alongside the woman beside him, Ren realized it felt so strange that she was from this planet and this place. Such practicality, strength, and ferociousness seemed at odds with the expanse in front of him and yet perhaps the very wildness of the beauty in front of him developed those qualities.

The silence lingered until Ren could no longer tell if it was uncomfortable or natural. As he reached the marble steps and stalked down them towards the lake and the patio, he realized that a younger him would have seen the full romance of the current situation. A younger him might have even dreamed up a scenario like this in his imagination. That the girl he hadn't known was a princess at the time would in fact be a princess with her own palace, and that he would be her prince. Flowery words would have come easily, and she would have shyly smiled at him, and it was nothing that resembled the relationship that they'd had in reality - one where Tenel Ka was unafraid to speak her mind, and there were no shy smiles, only practical recognitions that he did matter to her. 

Or he had. 

Ben had. 

"Grandfather said I should keep the name." 

His voice echoed slightly across the lake, fading quickly though before it could hit the other side of the mountain and make its way back. 

"You really spoke to Anakin Skywalker?" Tenel Ka finally offered him a question.

For his entire life, Ren had been certain that he'd been hearing Anakin Skywalker's voice. Darth Vader had been leading him to the First Order, to Snoke, to set up a galaxy like the one he'd been trying to achieve with the Empire. And it turned out, it seemed, that this had been a lie. So how could he be more certain about this? Why had he turned so quickly on a dime? Except that it had felt true. It had felt true in a way that Ren hadn't felt for years. 

"Yes," he stated, looking out at the distant line where the water seemed to meet the trees. From here it felt as if the trees started at the water's edge, even though Ren suspected there would be some space, at least a rocky barrier, between water and woods. "It was him, it couldn't have been anything else." 

"Yet, you've felt this entire time that your grandfather has been speaking to you - what makes this different?" 

"I can't explain that," Ren pressed his fingers together, and then turned, walking across the patio and then turning back to face her. "You don't have to believe me. It's not a surprise if you don't - nobody else does." 

Tenel Ka raised an eyebrow. "Fact, because you've not given anyone reason to trust you, Ren. Mara is not wrong there." 

"You don't trust me," Ren looked over at her. "Do you?" 

"It isn't about trust exactly," Tenel Ka tilted her head, her tone unemotional. "Ben Solo and I were friends once, but you are a different man than he was a boy, and I can see that easily. We are, then, in a very real way strangers, and I am still determining whether or not you can be trusted." 

For an instant Ren wanted to ask her about a shared memory, but doing so would undermine everything she'd just said - which was to give him the benefit of the doubt in some ways. The benefit of believing him when he said he wasn't Ben Solo. He hadn't really considered the outcome of that, but now that it was stated so clearly, it felt obvious and an uncomfortable sense of loss settled under the weight of that offering.

"I kept Ren because grandfather said to," he shrugged. "Ben does not fit anymore, but Kylo Ren did not fit either." 

"Would you do anything you believed your grandfather had told you to do?" 

The question rankled for some reason and Ren didn't answer it initially. Of course it wasn't just that and it had never been _just_ that. He'd had other reasons to do the things that he'd done, and it hadn't just been because he believed his Grandfather had said to do it.

"It wasn't just about that," he said finally, allowing the edge to creep into his voice. "It was about the fact that I was starting something different, something that wasn't my parents and wasn't Snoke. It was… mine. This is mine." 

"Is it?" 

Tenel Ka's skepticism dug deeply and Ren found himself wanting to whirl around and shake her. 

"Because right now you don't feel like this is yours," Tenel Ka persisted. "This feels like you flying here and there in the dark, just floating along because you believe someone you've set up in your head as being a hero has told you to do something, but life cannot be yours like that." 

"How do you know? You've never had my grandfather. You don't know what it's like to grow up thinking that your grandfather is one person, and then discover that he's something completely else, that the entire time someone has been telling you that you have a destiny, and then that feels right." 

"No, I don't know that," Tenel Ka was nonplussed. "But I have always been a Princess of Hapes. I have always known that no matter how I might pretend to be a normal person as I trained alongside others, that I would be expected to do this - be a queen - rule. Those were my expectations and they are hardly without any weight. You are not alone in carrying the weight of expectations from the galaxy and your people. I never ran from those obligations or expectations." 

"Are you saying I did? So what, that makes you a better person than me does it?" Ren's breath felt tight in his chest and he whirled around, his eyes dark. "You're saying I did, aren't you? That I ran away? Did you ever stop to think that maybe I needed to leave because it was holding me back, weighing me down, keeping me from my full potential? You know nothing about what happened to me, you can't judge." 

"I know nothing because you have told me nothing, Ren," Tenel Ka spoke with a quiet certainty. "You are angry that I don't know you, but you have given me nothing to know you with. That does not on its own make you a bad person, but it does mean that I cannot begin to understand what you did or why you did it." 

Ren wanted to lash out again, but he also didn't know exactly what words to use to even do so. Where he would have known instantly what to say had it been Hux, this wasn't Hux. It was more complicated than Hux, and if Ren were truthful with himself Hux was complicated. Hux just remained a complication that floated in the back of his mind. The first thing that came to mind wasn't a recourse against what she'd said, exactly, but against all of it - from the very beginning. 

"I'm not a Jedi," he snapped irritably. "I'm not going to follow some sort of shared trajectory, light side, feel good nonsense." 

"Obviously you're not a Jedi now," Tenel Ka pushed back. "But at one point you were and at one point you weren't afraid to share." 

"It has nothing to do with fear of sharing, it's -" Ren stopped, wanting first and foremost to tell her to shut up. Of course that really wasn't going to change the way everything felt raw and uncomfortable, or the way Ben's memories kept playing tricks on him, making him feel like this should be someone he could consider a friend. Or maybe she was just trying to figure out who he was so she could report on him to the others. That would make sense. 

"It's that it's none of your kriffing business," he turned to look at her. "None of it is. The galaxy would drown in light and fall apart if it were up to all of you." 

Tenel Ka's eyebrows threatened to raise out of her head. "You cannot be serious." 

"Everything I've had to do, yes, I'm serious," Ren looked across at her, at the skepticism written across her face, but of course she wouldn't get it. It likely wouldn't matter whether or not he told her everything that had happened to him. She wouldn't get it, and he would be left trying to explain to someone who couldn't understand. At least with Hux he suspected the other man would understand. "The galaxy is out of balance, and everything points to that. And I know everyone here thinks it's a problem that I'm refusing to accept their light, but this is bigger than that." 

"Revenge is bigger than this? Because that's what you were doing," Tenel Ka shook her head. "The galaxy _is_ out of balance, Ren, but at least a huge portion of that is because of the First Order. You think the destruction of an entire system won't throw everything into turmoil? Maybe you should pay a little bit of attention to that light because it's a lighthouse trying desperately to save you from the rocks you're about to crash on." 

"You still think like them," Ren threw back at her, frowning. "You still think like all of them and I thought maybe because you'd come out into the real world and you weren't a hermit somewhere practicing, that you'd have a more reasonable perspective on things, but you're just the same." 

"You're making a split judgement, and I've been attempting to not make one about you," Tenel Ka didn't seem bothered by his accusation. "In fact, I've been very actively giving you a chance to explain your perspective, if you had been listening at all." 

"I just tried, and you started rambling on about revenge and light!" 

"Fact, because revenge isn't going to lead you any place healthy, Ren, and because Ben Solo was my friend once, and I care about what happens to the man who replaced him just a little."

Ren didn't respond to that. The easy thing to tell himself was that she still thought of him as Ben Solo, and still thought he could be a Jedi again, or something along those lines. The reality was though, that she had differentiated in her words. More than he could have imagined that she might have done unbidden. Perhaps more than anyone outside of Anakin, Tenel Ka had accepted his words at face value and was offering them back to him in kind. It wasn't entirely expected, and yet, maybe it should have been. Because for all he'd thrown back at her that she was just like the others, she was too practical to get caught up in theory and philosophy. 

And perhaps she wasn't entirely wrong about revenge either. He'd been angry at his family for not telling him about his grandfather, and it had made it easy for him to follow Snoke's crooked finger, disguised under the mask of family. He'd followed it, believed it wholeheartedly, not thought twice about whether or not it was right, and he'd been misled. What parts of what Snoke had asked had been Ren, and what parts had been Snoke? 

And he'd killed Han Solo because he believed it was the sacrifice necessary, but it hadn't strengthened him. The Dark Side had not felt undeniable at that point in time. If anything, he'd been ready to collapse. It had been anger at Rey and the Traitor that had pulled him to his feet in that moment following. Anger that now felt like a deflated balloon -- all of it did. 

He'd acted. He even felt as if he'd thought over his actions before he'd gone with his siblings. And yet, now standing on a picturesque Hapan balcony, he was second guessing his decision. Wondering if he'd been manipulated yet again, or if Tenel Ka thought he had been. But Tenel Ka didn't know him, not now - she wasn't wrong about that. She'd known Ben Solo once and Ben Solo had been easily manipulated. Ben Solo had been weak and unable to deal with difficult things. And Kylo Ren was supposed to step away from all of those things, to be firmly in control and capable. And for a brief period of time Ren supposed he had been. There was the strength of purpose that came from giving orders to Stormtroopers, from tossing back and forth with General Hux, from commanding the fear and attention of everyone in the room, and he'd thought that meant he had purpose. What if he'd been lying to himself all along? And what if this was just another misdirection? Like a plant with low roots, easily pulled up by the wind and blown to a new place. 

"If I can give you a suggestion," Tenel Ka walked up beside him, her gaze feeling heavy on his face. "Don't put all your energy into fighting people who actually care about you."

"Me? Or Ben Solo?" Ren scoffed harshly. 

"I can only speak for myself, but you. And I think you might be surprised but others would likely say the same." 

Part of him was happy to fight that idea, but as he focused away from Tenel Ka and instead on the sounds of birds in the trees, the bubble of a fish rising to the surface on the lake to catch a bug for breakfast, and the general feel of the Force on this planet, he had to admit that there might be some truth to it. While he might find it difficult to believe of Luke, or even, honestly, of Rey. He did find himself believing it of Tenel Ka, of Anakin, perhaps even of Mara although she was difficult to read. 

"I missed you. The times we used to sneak out away from the others, and I would try to impress you by convincing a bird to come and sit on my shoulder." 

Tenel Ka's lips twitched. "And then you would end up with bird poop on your robes." 

"That only happened once," Ren protested even as it occurred to him in a very specific thought that he'd just referred to Ben Solo's memories as his own. For the first time in a very long time he realized that Ben Solo's memories weren't something he'd pushed away as something outside of himself. And for half an instant he felt as if he should pull in and explain that it wasn't exactly how it had come out that he had meant it, but then that felt unnecessary too. 

"It happened twice, there was the purple bird, and then the one with the giant red tail feathers. And there was lizard that bit you." 

"He didn't bite, he nibbled." 

"Luke had you in a healing trance for three hours," Tenel Ka laughed. "You had to pick the poisonous one." 

"It's not like I knew," Ren shook his head. "The whole planet's animal population deserved a good deal more cataloging on the holonet." 

"I always thought you'd be the one to do that," Tenel Ka shrugged easily. "You had such an interest in it." 

Ren almost felt accused, but it was light, and maybe he was feeling raw and over-sensitive. He fell silent, knowing that he couldn't have done that. What would it have mattered for some planets to be slightly more indexed zoologically speaking? It wouldn't have really, and what he'd tried to do - it had reasons and in theory would have helped the galaxy be safer. 

"We should go back to the others," Tenel Ka pushed back from the rail and turned to look at him. "But this conversation has been good, Ren."

"There's no good reason why I shouldn't be able to stand out here. Where am I going to go?" 

"That's the question isn't it?" Tenel Ka asked, and it had the feel of something rhetorical. "But I need to contact the main palace, so I must go in and you must come with me." 

Ren gave a look to the lake and then turned around in a fit of irritation. Suddenly the time to think and process felt essential and he wondered if Anakin would allow him to have some of it. 

Startled by a touch on his hand he looked down, and Tenel Ka had placed hers in his. The last time someone touched him it was Hux, in a bed on a ship and it felt like a lifetime ago. Perhaps he wanted to be left alone, but in the touch, it was as if she was recognizing that he did, and letting him know that she saw that. And for just an instant, he no longer craved the solitude.


	3. Rey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry about the huge delay on this. My October has been insane, and the rest of it doesn't promise to be much better, but I hope that there will be some moments in this chapter that will be really enjoyable for all of you. I know there are a couple of things I'm super excited to share with you. 
> 
> I do have the next chapter written, so the question is - will I have time to edit it before the first part of November? I suppose time will tell, but hopefully the next update will not be over a month in the waiting!

"Stay centered, Finn. You can feel the Force; use it to guide your movements." Luke Skywalker's voice filled the room with a steady warmth. 

Rey sat cross-legged on the ground watching as Finn got the privilege of working with Skywalker for the first time. Watching the two of them training left her content as they moved across the floor with Luke giving Finn quiet suggestions or slight praises or sometimes just a aggravatingly vague commentary. It was all familiar, as Rey had gone through many of these things herself not so very long ago, but seeing it for someone else allowed her to consider things in new ways, and reinforce others, and beyond any help it was to her there was a delight in seeing Finn lean into all of it. 

Or maybe that was just delight in seeing Finn. 

Rey couldn't quite keep the warmth off of her cheeks as she watched. For a moment she allowed herself the luxury of not worrying and instead just enjoying this man as he worked with a lightsaber that had once belonged to Obi-Wan Kenobi, found in a fortress that had once belonged to her grandfather. Although her grandfather was a topic too close to her brother in this moment, and neither of those family members belonged in this place of light. 

The light was both figurative and literal as the room was filled with light from the arched windows and from skylights that were not immediately obvious. Bathed in it like he was Finn felt like a mythological knight, the sort she might have heard about in a distant childhood that was so far removed from most of what she'd remembered. Yet, Finn was better than any legend, as was her Uncle who was currently speaking with him quietly as he explained some small detail about the Force. They were both real, the sort of men that Rey had never encountered on Jakku. Everyone on Jakku was focused on surviving, which meant that rarely was a hand outstretched. Finn's hand given to her, although she had been annoyed and fussy - she hadn't needed it, didn't want it, it wasn't useful - had been the first time she could remember anyone ever extending one. 

That he had continued to do so long after that moment and even when she'd rebuffed it had been something of the best kind of oddity. And as she watched him work with Luke she felt like she could see some of the same inner strength in both of them.

She hadn't really known what to expect when she'd found Luke Skywalker. She'd known only that he was her Uncle, a fact whispered into her ear by her mother before she had left the Resistance Base, and somehow she'd been grateful that she'd learned that piece of information feeling as if she would have bumbled through the whole experience at a far more significant rate had she not had it. He hadn't resembled the legends, but he was her Uncle. 

"Feel the Force," Luke's voice was quiet across the room. "Don't allow yourself to be distracted by incidentals, by noise or by sight. Your senses can deceive you, but the Force does not lie." 

"Can it be manipulated?" Finn's question was one that Rey had wondered as well when she'd started out. 

"Your understanding may be," Luke's words were just barely audible where Rey sat on the side of the room. 

"They seem to be doing well."

Rey glanced up to see Mara standing in the doorway nearest her, the older woman stepped in and came to sit down next to Rey. Her charcoal grey jumpsuit crinkled as she dropped into a cross-legged position next to Rey with the ease of a much younger woman. Rey wondered idly how much younger than Luke Mara Jade was, because she had to be some younger, yes? She certainly looked it. But then she knew also that Leia and Luke were the same age, and Luke seemed older than Leia somehow too. Was it the Force? Or was it the weight of everything else that had pulled down onto him?

Granted, he looked more at ease today, and there was a warmth in Mara's eyes that hadn't been there before. Rey glanced between them, and then shrugged: "Finn's been looking forward to the opportunity to really work with Luke. And there's only so much I can teach him. Probably Anakin too, honestly."

Mara's gaze was on Luke but she nodded almost imperceptibly. "Anakin is young, but experience has given him a fair amount to work with. Finn is similar, although his experience is not with the Force. Luke will have wisdom and perspective that all of you may lack, but I suspect you each will have things to learn from each other." 

Rey turned her head to look at Mara and now found herself meeting those very green eyes. "I feel like my experience has hardly been useful. I learned nothing about the Force on Jakku." 

Mara shook her head. "And Luke learned nothing about it on Tatooine, whereas your brother learned much about it from a teen on up. Anakin was trained in it from the time he was a child, a toddler even. The Jedi of old might have claimed differently, but I am not much bothered with disagreeing with a large number of dead wise men from before I was born," Mara's lips quirked up. "In my view there is no wrong way to come to the Force."

Rey smiled at this, her gaze following Finn's movement across the room. He had already had a good amount of training with weaponry in the First Order, it seemed he was now having a similar problem as what she'd had - being able to rely on the Force, not on already honed instincts. In theory, she supposed they would both eventually learn it. 

"Do you think Ren's dangerous?" She turned back to Mara, asking the question that had been on her mind for most of the morning. 

"Yes," Mara responded without any hesitation. 

Rey would have asked another question if it hadn't felt as if Mara had more to say and so she held her tongue, her gaze shifting between Mara and Finn in the silence. 

"How much do you know of my story?" Mara asked. "How much do you remember, or do you remember any of it?" 

"None, really," Rey shrugged, uncomfortable but also comfortable with the knowledge that much of her early childhood was a blank. Luke had helped her break through some barriers, and things were slowly coming back in, one thing might lead to the remembrance of another part, but largely there were a lot of holes. Mara was one of them. That she might have met her as a very young girl wasn't surprising to Rey - obviously Mara and Luke had known each other for some time - but it also wasn't something she could have said anything about. 

"I worked for the Emperor," Mara remarked with the same level of passion that she might relay the fact that she'd had caf with her breakfast. "Not the Empire, although that too, but the Emperor. Most people wouldn't have known much about me, but he sent me on missions and allowed me to train with the Force so that I could use it for him. After he died, rather than blame the Emperor or Vader, I blamed Luke. I sought him out to try to destroy him." 

If Rey had known any of this before it had been buried underneath any real memories of her childhood that mattered to her. Mara had lapsed into a thoughtful quiet as she watched the two men work, but Rey got the impression she wasn't done speaking so she waited. Leaning into the silence and the moment, Luke would have said. It felt as if she'd gained a whole vocabulary in her work with him, and she supposed she had. It had been training after all, even if she didn't feel as if she'd learned enough. 

"Ren and I are not the same," Mara finally spoke. "But in that I had to choose to come out from under my revenge, we perhaps have that in common. The question will be whether or not he chooses to do so as I did. And of course I cannot tell you what he will choose ultimately."

Rey sighed and her hand drifted to her lightsaber, feeling the line of the weapon for a moment. "Perhaps he's not the only one who needs to." 

Rey could feel Mara watching her. It wasn't revenge motivating her exactly, but there was something like it in the way she kind of didn't want Ren to come back. She'd watched him hurt so many people - her father, her mother, _their_ father and mother really - and how could he be accepted back from that? How could anyone ever trust him when those were the choices. And how could she forgive him from stealing, finally and without any deep remorse for having done so, her chance at reuniting her family. 

"The only person you have any control over, truly, is you," Mara said softly. "Others may hurt you, or betray you, or they may love you absolutely with a certainty that you can't return. You cannot control those things - those things may be _manipulated_ with fear or money or gifts or power - but they cannot truly be controlled. But you? You can control your own path. You make your own choices so long as you do not give that power away to another." 

"Do you think Ren has?"

"Almost certainly he has. He gave the power away to a voice he wasn't certain he knew, and then over to a grandfather he didn't know he had, and now to a grandfather he believes he saw. He has to regain his choices, but that is his journey. Yours is different." 

"Sometimes I'm angry with him. And sometimes I feel guilty for leaving him." This confession came out in a long sigh as if it would disguise the half-shame that lay behind it. Nothing Ben Solo had done or turned into was Rey's fault, and intellectually she knew that, but she also knew, had learned from her memories, that she had left. And the Ben Solo she remembered hadn't been the man she'd fought on Starkiller or even the one in their midst now. 

If Rey had been expecting a scolding it seemed none was incoming. She chanced a glance over at the older woman beside her. Mara was watching Luke. "You left the square, yes?" 

"I did," Rey said, and it was almost a relief to talk about it with someone other than Luke. Not that it hadn't been a relief (in a way) to figure out more what had happened when she was working with Luke, but Luke's eyes held the pain of all the years between. The years where she hadn't been aware of her family at all and had simply tried to survive on Jakku. "There was a woman, and she said that I should come with her. At first I said that I was supposed to wait right there for my brother, but then she said that she was with the people my brother was helping and that he'd sent her to come and get me. It seems so foolish, I should have known. It wasn't as if I hadn't been taught to never go with a stranger before." 

"What else do you know?" 

"She must have used something on me, because I don't remember much except that I was on a ship, and then I was on Jakku, and she seemed frightened almost. That was the odd thing. _She_ seemed frightened, and she said that my parents would be coming for me, I just had to wait here."

Mara hummed. "Everyone suspected that it was a politically motivated kidnapping. And when no ransom came in, no information, you really had just vanished, no one knew what to think. Ben took it hard, and your parents took it hard too. But really I think those first few months were the worst as they kept expecting the notes, and nothing came. And the hope quietly faded out." 

"A political kidnapping would have made sense at least," Rey frowned. There was a burst of frustration that it hadn't been, and that she hadn't been able to go back to her family, no matter what sort of ridiculous demands. "What doesn't make sense is just being left on Jakku. Why take me if you were just going to leave me there? It wasn't as if she could have gotten much from the transaction. I was a child." 

"You said that she seemed frightened," Mara was thoughtful for a moment, then she raised her eyebrows and ducked her head close to Rey's. "I looked around for a long time after, and then I continued looking even after that. I've traced more scarlet strings around the galaxy over the years trying to determine what happened to you. Long after your parents had decided to close it because they needed to move forward as best they could. But I'm…" Mara smiled slightly, but there was an edge of sadness to it. "Tracing strings is what I do. There was one string that was the closest I've ever gotten. I thought possibly it would lead me to you, and I'd be able to bring you back, or at least some closure of what happened."

"It didn't?" Rey frowned. Despite her memories, she would like to know beyond her memories of what happened the reason why. But maybe she was going to have to be content in the not knowing. 

"It didn't, but perhaps with some of what you've found," Mara seemed thoughtful. "At one point it seemed as if there was a bounty hunter with a tenuous connection to the First Order, although we didn't have a name for the First Order at that point in time. It was a connection to Centrists politicians, particularly some of the more extreme planets, and the bounty hunter herself - because it was a she, was one whose history was mostly unknown, but I believed once worked for the Empire like I did." 

"Was she Force sensitive?" 

"She was extremely lucky if she wasn't," Mara raised an eyebrow and turned to look at Rey. "But there was nothing to say one way or another."

"Whomever took me had to be," Rey shrugged. "Otherwise they couldn't have repressed my memories so readily. Whomever took me, repressed nearly all my early memories, and did so in such a way that I wasn't going to easily remember names or faces even if they were presented to me. When I met Han for the first time, there was something like family about him, but he wasn't family. At least, I didn't see him as family. That's how buried they were.

"Jakku was so far from anything, all we ever heard were rumors. If I ever saw a holo, then I don't remember it. Maybe if I'd been allowed to see something early on it would have reminded me of something but Jakku had nothing. And I was alone a lot. In that sense, it was an ideal place to leave me if you didn't want me to be found." Rey sighed. "I'm still not sure that I was supposed to not be found though. The feeling I had was that someone was supposed to come get me and then over a decade past, and nobody had, and then BB-8, and then Finn." 

"I'm tempted to go back to what I found," Mara offered. "But I'd have to go back to my ship at the Resistance to do so. None of it made sense to me as just a random kidnapping, maybe under certain contexts it could have, but with you here now, with what you're telling me it doesn't add up to that. And the fact that you were on Jakku in the first place, that it's the last place the Empire fought -"

"Do you think it had something to do with the First Order?" 

"If we can believe what Ren says, he was targeted early, mentally. He was always strong with the mental aspects of the Force, so that was perhaps the best way to target him. Or perhaps he was not the only target. You have a different set of skills, so if someone were trying to get to you - perhaps they would do so differently." 

"But why leave me there? Why not take me to the First Order, or Snoke, or whomever was out there, targeting Ben?" 

"That's what doesn't make sense," Mara frowned. "Regardless... the fact that you were on Jakku took you away from whatever, or whomever was interested in Ben. And there's nothing to say that they were only interested in Ben -- that he was their only target."

"They stole my family though," Rey looked over at Mara. "And I know that if you've never known your family, maybe this seems absurd but… they stole it and then Kylo Ren ended whatever hope there was when he killed our father." 

"He did," Mara didn't deny this, but she stood up. "You will have to decide how to handle him, Rey. That is your choice and yours alone, and perhaps the only thing that you can truly control in all of this. In your experience you've been given gifts that are yours alone - and they will help you."

Rey watched Finn and Luke stopping, and as they began to walk towards them, she could began to hear some of their conversation.

"You're stronger than you know," Luke was saying. "But you've learned to rely on things other than the Force. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, I had that too. But you'll need to unlearn that if you want to utilize the Force completely." 

"So how do I do that?" Finn asked. "Like, I have muscle memory, you know? It kicks in with the lightsaber, and I feel like sometimes those two things are at odds with each other."

"Because they are," Luke's eyes crinkled as his face burst into a smile. "And Rey had the same challenge, as did I." 

Rey scrambled to her feet. "It's part of the problem with learning to defend yourself without really knowing about the Force. Like, it's there, and you've probably used it, but you're not doing so with a conscious intent to listen - so." 

"What do you think would help?" 

"I don't know, maybe the remote some more? You said I could set it higher." 

"You can, if you're not afraid of getting really stung," Rey laughed. 

"I mean, what's a little shock when we're all at home. Better than losing one's hand or getting hit."

Rey beamed over at Finn who was grinning at her. All worries about her family aside, Finn's smile made her heart feel like it could float away. If she could choose her family maybe she'd choose Finn, and BB-8 if Poe would spare him, and maybe Poe for that matter - he seemed pretty decent - and probably Anakin, even though he was also sort of real family. But all of them made her feel like she was bathed in light and could take on the galaxy. 

"It's good to be learning it though," he looked over at Luke, suddenly serious. "I learned a lot as a Stormtrooper, obviously, but I need something more than just following orders. This is a focus that I want, need maybe even. Being a Jedi feels like something." 

Luke merely nodded and Rey wondered what he was thinking. When she'd found her Uncle, initially, they'd had some conversations and gone around a few times. She knew that without further training in the Force she'd have no hope of beating Kylo Ren. And even now that Ren was here she had to admit that she was glad he was staying with Anakin, and that Luke, Mara, and even Finn were here. She had beat him once, yes, but she wasn't about to get over-confident and assume that she could always beat him. She knew how injured he'd been during that fight - had seen the blood dripping from his side - and that had to have affected his strength and his skill. Even if it hadn't - she also knew that she'd bordered dangerously close to acting from anger in her last moments.

And that was one place where she maybe agreed with Luke in his uncertainty about the Jedi's place in the galaxy, because he was uncertain and she knew that. They'd had that conversation, but he'd taught her skills anyway - taught her to listen to the Force, to understand the balance, to be aware of the galaxy around her, and those things were the heart of what she'd brought out of that training and brought back to the Resistance base. 

Anakin approached the Force and the Jedi differently, and in some ways Rey wished she had the time to really speak to him about it. Because he seemed to absolutely believe in the Jedi with no doubt. They were a good thing for the galaxy, and he was one, and there was no hesitancy in saying this. And yet, Rey wasn't certain whether he and Luke might not consider the Jedi different things. While a conversation comparing training between Ren and Anakin was unlikely in the extreme, Rey got the sense that there had been differences - shifts - in what was. And Anakin didn't seem to hold any fear of the dark, sometimes she wondered if her Uncle had that same lack of fear. 

Sometimes, if Rey were being perfectly honest, she wondered if she had that same lack of fear. It was a question asked every time she was required to consider her brother. 

Her thoughts were interrupted as she realized Finn was speaking to her. He winked. "You should go out and show the old man here what you've got going on." 

"Old, hmm?" Luke's brows raised, and he glanced over at Mara who had caught his attention by giggling. It was an odd sound coming from her lips. 

"Very old, very mature, very respectable, very Jedi Master of the year," she smirked. 

"Alas, I don't think the last applies," Luke shook his head. "But I would like to see what you've been practicing, Rey."

Rey nodded and reached for her lightsaber. "Anakin showed me a few things and we practiced together several times." They stepped away from Finn and Mara who stayed on the edges, Finn wiping his brow with a cloth, and beginning to engage Mara in a friendly conversation, and Rey focused back to her Uncle. "Both on the Falcon, and back at the Resistance," she explained. "Some of the moves weren't ones you'd shown me, and some of them weren't things I was familiar with. He said there were different styles of lightsaber combat, and that Jedi sometimes had a specialty of style." 

"That's true," Luke nodded. "We hadn't really gotten into that, because it felt more academic maybe than what you were ready for. It's the sort of thing a Jedi holocron would likely teach you if you wished to spend the time with it, but -"

"But there's Ren, and the First Order, and now's not the best time to be quibbling over forms and instruction?" Rey sank her legs into a warm-up position as she glanced over at her Uncle. "It's all right, I don't know if I was ready for it. I'm not certain I was now. Anakin mentioned things in passing, and there's a lot I don't know." 

"There was a lot I didn't know when I faced Vader and the Emperor," for an instant Luke looked older and more weary again. For a moment he seemed to hesitate and then he added: "I would not recommend it generally, but one can only focus on one place at a time, and if you wish to be a Jedi, it is a lifetime work. As Anakin will also find out if he has not already." 

"Have you spoken to him much?" Rey asked, switching her position, stretching a different set of muscles and trying even as she was having the conversation to lean into the Force, to feel the light, the darkness, the balance, the _Force_ all around them. 

"Not about the Jedi Order he knows," Luke responded. "If that is what you're asking about." 

"You should," Rey suggested, feeling tentative, but also that it would be good for both of them. 

She couldn't help but feel the regret and heavy despair underneath the surface of her Uncle's emotions, and it didn't seem healthy. She didn't know if it would help Luke to have the conversation with Anakin or not, but it seemed as if it could not hurt for him to realize that there was a world in which he trained Jedi and things did not go wrong, where his nephew instead of growing into a man who murdered without second thought and based life decisions upon revenge, was someone like Anakin Solo - a man who seemed to want to do the right thing even if the cost was high. She didn't always agree with what Anakin came up with, but she'd begun to understand what to expect from him, and there was a genuine sincerity and willingness to risk on faith in others that Rey respected. And maybe in at least some of the cases where she hadn't agreed, it was at least a little that she wished she could come to the same conclusion herself. 

"Let's see a rundown of what you've learned from Anakin," Luke pulled his own lightsaber and Rey focused away from the possibilities that were invading her mind and into the moment. 

The Force was there in the room. It wasn't sentient, yet she could pull on it, and feel it as a part of her life, her body, where she wanted to go and what she wanted to do, and what she would need to be in the next few moments. 

Her eyes closed for an instant, acutely focusing on that awareness, and then she brought the lightsaber around in a swing towards Luke's shoulders. It was met, and her eyes opened, she brought herself into a rundown of those techniques that Anakin had taught her. Her muscles seemed light with the exhilaration of being able to show something learned - something new - even if it was not necessarily new to Luke. But each motion had been something she'd not used before either on Jakku or in the training that she'd done with Luke. 

Luke matched her blow for blow as she blocked and parried, utilizing the full space of the room. The Force felt electric, a part of her that seemed to energize her muscles and her reflexes, creating a spark snap that pushed her forward just a little bit further. Or perhaps that electricity was Rey, not the Force - it was difficult to tell the difference between the two - she used that power to allow herself to jump further than she might normally be able to, to come back around and bring the lightsaber to Luke's back. 

It was met. 

Every motion of hers was met although at times a flicker, almost like a small insect passing just barely near enough to catch the eye of her vision, and when she finally pulled to a close, it was near the center of the room, and she was sweating slightly as she pulled her lightsaber up and met Luke's eyes. 

For someone much older than her, he didn't seem to have been put out by the activity at all. It was impressive to her, perhaps more so because she was used to the way that Jakku tended to age people way before they should have wrinkled and lost ability to move as a young person. Someone only twenty years older than her might have moved with less grace and ability than she saw in the man in front of her. 

"I could do more if I had another lightsaber," she added, dimples forming in her cheeks. 

"You learned Jar'kai?" Luke did seem slightly surprised by this. 

"Anakin taught me a few things," Rey shrugged. "He's pretty good at it - better than me - but I'd like to learn. I'm used to the one weapon as a staff… and there's something incredibly graceful and dangerous about two lightsabers moving in opposite directions." 

"There is at that," a shadow caught Luke's eyes, and he shook his head. "You will have to show me that later this week. Perhaps we can each borrow a lightsaber if Finn and Mara will let us." 

"You know it?" Rey peered at Luke trying to determine the course of the shadow. There was so much she didn't know about him, and so much that Luke wouldn't tell her and it was a little frustrating. 

"Yes, I do, although it has been many years since I've had opportunity to practice it," Luke pulled her attention back. 

And there it was, Rey felt, the string she could pull: "Since Ben?" 

The pause held enough weight that Luke didn't have to say anything for Rey to know that she was right about there being something there. Even if she couldn't be certain what the something was. 

"It is just a series of exercises without partners to practice," Luke said only. 

"That's it?" Rey pushed, kindly, but there was push there. 

"It is a useful skill if necessary, as you say - graceful and dangerous." 

Rey resisted the urge to stretch her legs out after the exercise. It would have been a distraction - largely - and she knew that. There was more in Luke's comment, but the thread had been tucked back up. "Do you think it's dangerous to trust him?" She asked instead. 

Luke put his lightsaber away, and he did move his muscles, easing into a stretch with the motion that reminded her of the fact that he was quite a bit older than her. She supposed he'd been using the Force maybe more than she'd realized when they'd been fighting. 

"Yes." 

The word came out with more confidence than Rey had anticipated from her Uncle. That confidence was at once a boost, because it agreed with her, and also a source of discomfort, because part of her wondered if she did have it wrong. The answer was supposed to be helpful, she realized wryly, and it only felt as if it had made things more complicated in her mind. She tilted her head, looking over at him. As if recognizing the confusion, Luke shifted his stance and his face, though serious, held empathy. 

"It was dangerous for me to hand my father a lightsaber and leave myself unarmed," he said softly. "It worked. It might not have. And at the time I think I could only see that it would work, it would have to. That my father would have to understand that I was his son, that the connection would mean more than his tie to the Emperor. And in that faith I set off, not truly considering what happened if that bid fell." 

"Would you have gone if you had considered it?" 

"Yes," Luke said firmly, "because I think I had to. But what would have happened if it had fallen? If the Empire had not been taken down that day? One cannot spend too much time dwelling in the past, but sometimes I wonder." 

"So what do I do with Ren?"

Luke paused and the pause drew Rey's attention once more to her Uncle's face. She couldn't be certain if something was warring under the surface, but it almost felt like it. Or maybe that was only her own battle in whether or not she wanted to forgive her brother anything. Why couldn't he have been more like Anakin? She could see herself and Anakin making sense of the galaxy together. They didn't have to agree on everything, but it didn't feel difficult to recognise him as someone that she could be friends with and get along with. Someone like Finn, honestly, well, not exactly like Finn, but that wasn't the point. The point was that she refused to find any commonalities with Ren, outside of the fact that they both had the same parents. 

"Only you can answer that question for you," Luke spoke finally, quiet in the room, but commanding her full attention despite the lower pitch of his voice. "Is it risky to trust him, yes. Is it risky to not trust him and risk we may be losing some valuable piece of information or asset? Also yes. If you are asking me if there is a right or a wrong, a light or a dark, I'm not certain I'm qualified to answer that question for you. And I'm certainly not qualified to answer which will be the best outcome. Always -"

"In motion is the future," Rey finished the sentence along with him, and she sighed. "I should have known there wasn't an easy answer." 

But some things at least were easier than they used to be. Rey still found herself in awe of planets with green and life abundant. The idea of it not simply being carved desperately into existence by sheer determination, was something that made her feel as if she'd been released from a cage and wasn't quite certain where to go next. 

This planet in the Hapan cluster had that effect as she and Finn wandered the grounds later that afternoon. The sky was deep blue overhead, matched in equal tones by the verdant greens in the forests that surrounded this particularly palace. Tenel Ka had explained to Rey that this was a private royal palace. One of the few places the queen could go without her general entourage, and it was hard to imagine any of this beauty just at the whim of one individual - even a Queen. But it was being shared with all of them and giving them a place to sort through things so obviously Tenel Ka did not keep it only to herself.

"I don't like giving him information," Finn said as a bird to their right let loose with an incredible trill and then took off in a bright rush of indigo tail feathers. "I mean, sure, he says he's got the same goal as us, but how do we know that he and Hux aren't just trying to take down the Supreme Leader for their own means, and then he'll return to the First Order with all this information?"

"We don't," Rey followed down four brick steps into what appeared to be an entertainment patio. There was a man-made lake of some variety sitting in the midst of the patio, stairs down into it, and Rey wondered what such a thing was intended for - particularly with the lake right there to be viewed from the chairs and tables sat up around them. "He killed Dad. He all but said that Revenge was his motive for going after Snoke. He's mad that he thinks he was lied to, but how does he not see the pain he's caused everyone else?" 

"Considering other people's perspectives has never struck me as a strong point," Finn said stopping at the end of the steps beside her and reaching for her hand. "You don't have to forgive him that you know." 

"I don't," Rey agreed. And yet she almost wondered if she did have to. If, by not doing so, her own motivations weren't nearly as revenge driven as Ren's. Maybe more justified, surely, but it wasn't _just_ about justification was it? There was more to it than that. "We could just make the plan with Anakin, and tell Ren what it is as necessary, and that would take that risk out." 

"But it also means he can't give us any advice, assuming he is trying to not kill us," Finn shook his head. "I just don't like the choices." 

"Me either," Rey squeezed his hand. Maybe she hadn't wanted to feel dependent upon him when he'd taken her hand the first time, but maybe now she sort of appreciated the support. "Let's spend the next twenty minutes just not thinking about my brother, maybe? I've spent so much time thinking about him today -- Probably more than he deserves." 

"Fair," Finn grinned, and then he nodded. "You want to go swimming?" 

"Swimming?" 

"Yeah, in the pool over there. There isn't a sign saying we can't so I'm guessing that means it's free for the taking." 

Rey turned to look at the small lake, and it suddenly clicked into her mind that a body of water like that, created as it was, would have some purpose other than just being visually pretty. And it _was_ visually pretty with blue and orange tiles around the edges, and going down into the sides and the bottom of the water, a running waterfall at one end, and steps that held a deeper blue color and made the water itself seem almost a different color. 

"I don't know how."

"How to swim? Well, I wouldn't have expected that you'd have had much opportunity on Jakku," Finn was already shrugging off the jacket he was wearing and draping it over the back of a chair. "But don't worry - that was covered in Stormtrooper training, so I can teach you. Plus, who knows - maybe you had some training as a girl, and it'll come back to you when you get in." 

Rey looked back at the water, and then at Finn. He was pulling his shirt over his head and for a moment she couldn't resist letting her gaze linger on muscles moving underneath his skin, and while typically she hated to say that there was something she couldn't do, or put herself in a situation where she had to rely on anyone else, right then and there, she had to admit the very real appeal of putting herself in Finn's bare arms. 

"All right," she nodded. "Do we wear our clothes?" 

"I'd strip down to your undershirt and shorts," Finn said. "You can use specific swimwear, but we don't have any of that right now." 

Rey shrugged off her own jacket, and took off her boots. Underneath the jacket was a lightweight short sleeve shirt so she left it on, and pulled her trousers down, leaving only the shorts underneath. Barefoot, she stepped over towards the water. "Can I stand up in it?" 

"I'm guessing you can on this end," Finn stuck his toe in the water and apparently it stuck his approval because he then stepped down into the water. 

As he reached the bottom of the stairs, the water seemed to be just above his waist, which answered her question: They weren't that different in height after all. Rey took a breath and then stuck her foot in, landing it on the first step. The tiles had a rough texture, she supposed to make them less slippery, and tickled her toes just a little. But the water was warm, and it felt kind of amazing. She'd had showers and baths, and experienced rain falling down on her when she was at Ach-To but this was different. This was a lot of water just there for the taking. She reached for the handrail and stepped down to the next step, following down to where Finn was. 

Her shirt wasn't maybe made to be wet, but it wasn't too heavy as she stood in the water and marveled at the fact that she was standing in this much water in the first place, and made for nothing else than what they were doing - apparently.

"Is this what this is here for?" She asked Finn, trying a step towards him. It worked, although there was a near buoyancy to her body that wasn't something she was very used to at all. Like, the gravity sensors on a ship were set a little too high and her walk was a little too light. For a half instant she thought she might float up and lose the ground, and then her feet came back again. 

"Probably," Finn shrugged. "Rich people do this, or so I've been told. And Tenel Ka's a queen, so it seems to make sense she'd have something like this for no other reason than swimming in. The pools we had to train in weren't this fancy. They just didn't want us to drown if we ended up having to fight in or near water. They were long and narrow, like - you'd have lanes for practicing your strokes - and they were pretty austere. Then again, I guess pretty much everything the First Order did could count as austere, and basically nothing here is." He tilted his head back towards the palace they'd left behind. 

Rey turned her head to follow his gaze. The way it was built into the landscape looked natural, but it couldn't be completely. She wondered how many droids or workers it took to keep it looking like this. And she wondered equally how long it had been here. How many centuries ago the columns that she could see from the promenade had been formed and what queen had been the first of the Hapan's to enjoy the breeze from between them?

"First thing is really to learn how to float," Finn offered amiably. 

Rey pulled her gaze back from the architecture to the man beside her. The water beaded up on his skin, and made her want to reach over and touch it. She resisted the urge and tried to consider what he was actually saying. "You mean swimming?" 

"Yeah, that's what I mean. Floating's the surest thing cause you can do it for a long time without wearing yourself out if you need to, see it's just like this," and his feet pulled up off the ground as he brought his head and shoulders back down into the water, laying himself out horizontally. 

Water came up over his ears and for a moment Rey was worried he'd sink, until it stabilized just on the halfway point on his head and body, and he lay there, staring at the clouds. 

"I don't know if I can do that," she admitted. 

Finn pulled himself back up to a standing position and shook his head to get water from his ears. "Sure you can," he encouraged, moving through the water to come and stand beside her, his hand wrapping around her shoulders. "Pull your legs up and put your shoulders back, and I'll keep my hands under your shoulders and lower back just like so, okay? And I'll get you - you shouldn't sink." 

Rey supposed that if she could learn to use the Force, floating ought to be a lot easier than that, so after nodding, she lifted her feet up, flailing when it felt a bit as if she were sinking even with Finn's arms under hers and she brought them back down again.

"Hey, hey, trust me," Finn stepped forward and brought his face in close to hers. "I'm not gonna let you drown, cause I kinda like having you around, okay? So, trust me, and I'll get you floating on your own, but not until you can do it." 

"It just feels really awkward, like - I'm not going to hold up…"

"Yeah, but you will - when you're straight and relaxed, the water just is there, it just holds you." 

"Right," Rey frowned slightly and closed her eyes determining that she was going to do this. She could do things with the Force; she could certainly do this. "All right, ready," she said again as she lifted her legs up, feeling Finn shift to hold her. 

Three tries later, Rey finally allowed herself to really relax into it, and as she felt her weight shift somewhat, and she could feel Finn's arms under her shoulder blades and another pull in under her lower back, she laid flat back. The sounds under the water were distorted, the call of a bird seeming overly far away even though Rey suspected he was in a tree nearby. She could hear the waterfall rumbling low in the pool, but most importantly she could hear Finn's congratulation, sounding at once familiar and alien, and despite herself, she smiled. And with the smile her body moved, her pelvis tipping lower towards the ground, and the next thing she knew she found herself basically sitting on Finn's arms as he pulled her back up out of the water, her hair hanging down around her face in wet snakes, and her ears holding water. 

It had felt more magical than she'd anticipated that it would. Just bathing in water had been magical enough, but this was so much water, and it had genuinely felt as if she might fly away up to the sky at some moment. Well, maybe not exactly like that because it wasn't precisely like being in the Falcon, but it was a similar feeling of that weightlessness that seemed to yank behind your belly-button when you were flying -- except without the yank. She knew that she was beaming at Finn and he was grinning back at her as if her having done the mild thing that she did was incredibly impressive. 

"You did good until you decided you were gonna get too proud of yourself or whatever that was," Finn grinned, stepping into wrap his arms around her in a quick hug. "I bet if we do it a few more times you'll get it. Maybe I could hold you with the Force - that might be a little more steady than just the arms under your back at different points?" 

Rey stepped back and nodded. "Let's try that - it's good practice for both of us." 

"All right then," Finn considered her for a moment, and she could feel him leaning into the Force as she closed her own eyes and tried to relax backwards once again. 

It was unnerving to lift her legs off the ground even though she was pretty certain that Finn was going to catch her if she needed it. She could feel that focus, and she put her head back into the water, a mild anxiety sliding in as she pushed her feet off the bottom of the pool and towards the surface of the water. But Finn did have her, or at least she was fairly confident that extra boost was Finn. She didn't think she'd figured out the back float just yet. She breathed out, trying to relax and listen once again to the underwater sounds and the amplification of everything else that could be heard, the falls, the birds, the motion that Finn made when he moved, and he was moving. 

… Towards her.

She moved to put her feet down and pull her head up, and found herself still slightly held up in the Force, leaving her feeling off-centered and she put a hand out into the water as if it would hold her up, and it wouldn't, but then Finn's chest was right there and he was holding her up as she stumbled into him. 

"You know I was only just barely holding you," he grinned cheekily and closed the distance between them. 

"And then when I tried to get down you were all nope," Rey returned, equally cheeky. 

"Maybe I didn't want to let go," Finn lifted a hand to push back one of the wet strands of her hair. "Maybe I like getting a chance to lift you up." 

Of course she didn't want to think she needed that, but at the same time his eyes were connecting with her, and the gaze left shivers running down her spine. The water was warm so it couldn't be the temperature, it had to be something else. Something in the way he was looking at her right now. 

Some part of her suspected that what she had to do would be easier to do if she didn't allow herself to get too distracted by a man - even one as genuinely attractive as Finn. And yet, she found herself leaning in towards him, and his lips coming down to capture hers, and he pulled her in towards him - a gentle float as she slid her arms around him. 

A million things should have been on her mind: her training, her brother, and even what she might have yet to learn from Luke before they would move in to try to take down Snoke. But all she could focus on was the rich sensation of Finn's arms around hers, and his lips warm and persistent against hers, and the way that she could slide in up next to him in the water, and this, more even than the floating she'd just done, felt like that turn in one's stomach when one jumped to lightspeed. Finn kissing her felt like taking off in a ship, and perhaps that was a good enough reason to keep kissing him. 

"I can float on my own," she murmured, as she pulled back. 

"Maybe someday," Finn murmured back, pressing his lips now to her jawline, dropping a kiss up the line to the base of her ear. "But right now, you've got me here to hold you up." 

She could have told him to stop, that she wanted to learn on her own, but she didn't. Sure, eventually she would, and she trusted Finn when she said stop that he'd do just that, but right now, he wasn't wrong that having him holding her was something wanted. 

"One more try?" She asked, not wanting to get out of the water just yet. 

Finn pulled back, just a little distracted from the kisses he'd left on her cheeks and jawline. 

"You sure?" 

"Well, I'm not ready to go in yet," she shrugged. "And I would like to be able to float on my own sooner rather than later. It seems a useful skill when I'm going to be on planets that do have water." 

"You know, I had all these other plans…" 

"All these other plans?" Rey leaned in, and this time she was the one who planted kisses along his jawline. "Plans other than being with me?" 

She looked up, her eyes twinkling and saw the moment that Finn realized he couldn't really deny her the request because after all, that was why he was here, wasn't it? Part of it had been the Resistance sure, but he'd jumped at the chance to come with her on this trip. She couldn't help a thrill at knowing that it had to be partially her, because otherwise, well wouldn't he have been back with Poe and the others? 

"Well?" 

"Lay yourself back down then," Finn chuckled. "Cause you're right - all my plans involve you." 

A rush of warmth blossomed at Finn’s words. Maybe he hadn’t meant them exactly like that, she was likely reading way too much into it, but it was still a nice idea and one that felt so very Finn to her. He was constantly reaching out to her. The only blip had been in those first moments on Takodona, but then he’d come to get her on Starkiller, and he kept coming with her.

_Maybe_.

But for the moment she found herself trying again, just like she’d asked for help with. This float was easier until halfway through it she realized that Finn wasn’t holding her up anymore. She bent up, instantly headed towards the bottom of the pool, and Finn was there catching her, laughing at her.

“You had that! What are you doing crazy desert lady?”

“You were gonna drop me,” Rey laughed back, sending a spray of water in his direction.

“Hey, I was there, just underneath, you couldn’t feel me, but you didn’t _need_ me,” Finn was laughing, and he took the water splash good naturedly, sending another one back to her really quickly.

Whatever real practice had been occurring was lost in the sound of splashing and laughter, until Rey headed for the stairs, and they were both back up on the tile patio, laughing together as Rey tried to figure out if she could put her clothes back on without them completely sticking to her.

“They probably have towels back in the rooms,” Finn pointed out.

“Being this wet is a novelty,” Rey laughed. “But I can’t walk through a palace like this.”

“Here,” Finn reached over with his shirt and wiped off her arms, then picked up her tunic and tossed it at her. “Better?”

“But you’re going to be all wet.”

“Yeah, but I’m not feeling some compunction about walking through the palace all wet like you are,” his eyes twinkled.

Rey laughed and pulled her tunic on over her head. Her trousers came on slowly, sticking to wet places on her calves and thighs, but she tugged them up and managed to make them come up in the end. The world might come rushing back in later, but she was savoring the feeling of just the focus on this moment. 

Such breathless delight couldn't last forever, and the next morning they all, her brothers both included, gathered back in the room that had become a sort of council room for the time being. Anakin had begun by sharing what they’d all learned on Vjun, and Rey watched Ren’s face as Anakin related the chamber that they’d found on Vjun. Once upon a time she could remember that she’d known what Ren was thinking. They’d had a connection, and it was a connection that had probably been what broke through the walls in her memories when she’d been on Starkiller and Ren had tried to question her. It had backfired on him, but it had opened up pieces of things she’d long forgotten.

“And the vision I had in it, it really wasn’t like any vision I’ve had before,” Anakin was explaining to Luke. “I wasn’t in a meditation, or really looking for anything. I wasn’t sleeping. But it was very definitely there.”

“But we don’t know that it’s relevant to any of this,” Rey pointed out, her eyes watching Ren, who was listening, but not saying anything specific to it. “It could have just been an outgrowth of being in that location.”

“But you were in that location because of a vision as well,” Luke pointed out calmly. “Is that right?”

“That’s true,” Anakin nodded. “I had a vision of Tahiri, one of my friends from home, on Vjun. We’d been there before when we were younger.” He glanced over at Finn and the lightsaber that hung from Finn’s belt. “We found Ben Kenobi’s lightsaber there, and ultimately I used that design and some pieces from it to make my lightsaber. It's the same lightsaber Finn has.”

“I also had a vision, but I didn’t know what it was for,” Ren spoke up. “And I didn’t know where it was. Snoke said it wasn’t important. And I was following his orders when my ship broke down.”

“Doesn’t this all feel really coincidental?” Finn pointed out.

Luke hummed, and turned his back to all of them. And Rey knew that he was thinking. She used the time to look at her older brother. Finn wasn’t wrong about it feeling a bit like coincidence. How had Ren’s ship broken down just there? Then again, if the vision hadn’t been a directive, if it had been a sign of the future, then that maybe made sense. It was Ren’s insistence that it was a directive after all and he might be wrong.

“We have two basic options as I see them,” Mara pointed out. “We can assume that finding the temple on Vjun was something we just stumbled into along the way, or we can assume it was a part of why we were there and consider clues that might be laid within. But I wonder if Ren might be more helpful in determining this than any of us will be?”

Ren glanced up, and there was an uncertainty in his gaze that reminded Rey of some of the smaller dune animals just before they disappeared into the sands. But maybe Mara was right. “What would you say?” She asked her brother, as gently as she could manage when she still wasn’t entirely certain that they should be trusting him.

“I don’t know,” Ren said. And upon several looks of skepticism, he raised his hands up and looked down. “I really don’t know. I know that the vision I had was obviously of Grandfather’s fortress.”

“What did we really learn from the temple, other than it existed? There isn’t anything that relates to Snoke,” Rey sighed, frustrated. “It was hundreds of years ago, and right now we have this war and Snoke that need to be dealt with, not some ancient Jedi mystery.”

“If the two are related in some way,” Luke spoke up mildly. “I think it will make itself clear. In the meantime, perhaps it would help us all if,” there was a hesitation and then he continued as if he had not missed a beat: “Ren would tell us what he knows of Snoke.”

Ren looked over, and for a moment Rey thought he might reject the request and stalk out, but then he seemed to make up his mind and he lifted his head, as if daring them to question anything he said.

“He’s been in Unknown Space for a long time, that’s one thing I know for certain. I don’t know for certain how long, and I don’t know if he was from there, or if he came from elsewhere – I do know that he has a fair familiarity with this galaxy.”

“Wait, so he’s not the First Order?” Finn raised an eyebrow. “’I always thought dude was head of the First Order.”

“He is,” Ren replied testily.

“But the First Order rose out of the Empire,” Mara looked over at Finn, seeming to understand where he was coming from. “The Empire rose out of this known galaxy. If Snoke has been out there for longer than the First Order, then he didn’t start the First Order.”

“Not unless Palpatine had someone pulling his strings,” Finn shrugged.

“That doesn’t seem right,” Mara shook her head. “I worked with Palpatine. He had utter control and multiple contingency plans – and that only covers what _I_ was aware of.”

“Could someone else have been sending those plans to him?” Luke questioned.

“It’s not impossible,” Mara admitted slowly. “But I would be extremely surprised if that were the case.”

“Snoke never speaks of Palpatine, unless it’s to talk about the aspects of his rule that were good for the Galaxy. Or how Grandfather messed up and failed him,” Ren put in. “I’d agree with Mara.”

“So someone who’s been outside the galaxy is suddenly interested in what’s happening in this galaxy?” Rey hadn’t said much, but there was something about that idea that didn’t really feel right. Why would someone care? She supposed that power was a motivator, and those that dealt with the Dark Side seemed to really enjoy power, so perhaps they would be attracted to the First Order when they moved into their turf. “And that someone has familiarity with this galaxy?”

“You think it’s someone who has been here before?” Anakin asked. “He’d have to be hundreds of years old.”

“Some species live for centuries,” Luke pointed out. “It’s not impossible.”

“He asked me to heal him when I first arrived,” Ren spoke suddenly.

Rey turned around to stare at him and he shrugged, sitting up and leaning forward more seriously. “Multiple times, and continued to have me doing it. It was easier to do when I had access to more power, so he let me study the Dark Side – encouraged me to learn what Grandfather had done.”

“You always had an aptitude for healing,” Luke stated carefully.

“I did, but it’s a lot faster, more… electric when you’ve got access to more power,” Ren didn’t seem apologetic for this fact. “Snoke seemed to love that about me. Said it was an excellent characteristic. When I did particularly well, my reward was usually to spend time with Vader’s holocron.”

“The one I saw,” Anakin mentioned quietly as Ren looked up and caught his eyes, nodding just slightly.

“Vader had a holocron?” Luke’s surprise surprised Rey. How had he not known something like that?

“Yeah,” Ren nodded. “It was among some Imperial artifacts that were brought out with the First Order. At least, that’s what Snoke told me.”

“I never even heard rumors of one,” Luke was looking keenly at Ren and if Rey weren’t very mistaken, her Uncle was doing his best to check on the truthfulness of what her brother was saying. She wondered if he were having any luck, because she certainly had not been having much luck in that regard recently.

“I don’t believe its existence was well known or documented. I think he believed the Emperor would have considered it a threat to his power, a sign that Vader planned to teach an apprentice,” Ren suggested. “Based on what I’ve heard while exploring it.”

“Are you still healing him?” Rey looked over at her brother.

Their eyes met and Ren was silent.

“Ren?” Anakin finally broke the silence.

“Yes,” Ren nodded. “Not often. Not like when I first came. But occasionally still, yes.”

“So you being gone will …”

“Be noticed eventually? I’m kriffing counting on it. There aren’t that many people who can do what I was doing for him. But he got it on lies, so I’m fine with him suffering.” The bitterness in Ren’s tone was acrid in its intensity.

Rey frowned.

“Well, if that’s the case, on the bright side, he may not be feeling as perky,” Anakin offered, with a hint of sarcasm that sounded so much like her father, that for an instant Rey really missed Han fiercely.

“That sort of healing should be difficult to replace,” Mara noted. “Ren has an aptitude for it, as you noted. And he has training.”

“It feels weird that the revenge guy’s good news should feel like good news for the rest of us,” Finn shrugged. “But I’ll take it.”

“We still don’t really know anything about the temple, and whether it relates,” Anakin sighed. “I’m going to do some research. And in the meantime, maybe you guys can talk through how this lack of healing might affect Snoke in the short-term. If there’s something we can exploit to help the Resistance…”

“I don’t care about the Resistance.”

Finn made a face. “Yeah, yeah, revenge guy, we get it. But we do, okay? So just shut it.”

Ren’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t move.

“We can’t stay here doing nothing forever. We’re going to have to do something, and so far, we’re just talking in circles,” Rey frowned, still watching her elder brother. “Can you talk me through what you do?”

Ren pressed his lips together, and nodded.

“Mara why don’t you work with Rey and Ren while Finn and I practice this morning,” Luke stepped up, his posture signaling the meetings conclusion. “Anakin you’ll work on the research on Vjun, and let us know if anything signals that it’s important? Perhaps your research should include some meditation.”

“Yeah, I was kinda thinking that,” Anakin flashed a grin at his Uncle. “But I think that sounds good. We’ll meet again later today.”

“Or tomorrow – we’ll know better when we meet for lunch likely,” Luke said.

Mara nodded her head towards Rey and Rey stood up, ready to follow Mara.

“May the Force be with us all.”


	4. Anakin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The best laid intentions are worth nothing in October. Y'all should know this and I should accept it. 
> 
> Thanks for hanging in there and being patient, and maybe, _maybe_ I'll be more together for this month! Enjoy.

"There's around a hundred or so," Anakin stretched his back out of the position he'd been holding. . 

It was early, before breakfast, with the pre-dawn just barely visible outside the archways of the portico. Normally Anakin wouldn't be up this early. Normally he wouldn't be talking this early either, but these were hardly normal circumstances, and to be honest, Anakin couldn't remember when he'd last felt normal. He stepped across the room where a cup of caf sat on a railing and he picked it up to take a sip before continuing. 

"Most of the training occurred on Yavin IV. Mon Mothma gave you the temple ruins there to use as an instruction area after the war, and so you set up an area where students could train. There are some that are more your age, a few that are older, but many are younger - I trained with probably ten or fifteen other kids, some of them were the same as ones that trained with Jaina and Jacen. You started with just a handful, but the Order has been growing for a number of years now." 

"Did I stay on Yavin IV?" Luke's expression gave nothing away and Anakin wondered what he was thinking of this other him. How odd it must be; equally odd for Luke as it was for Anakin. 

"Not always," he shrugged. "There were times the New Republic needed you, so you'd do things for them, or you'd hear something about the Jedi Order had been discovered, so you'd go to see whether or not it was a real lead. Especially once you'd trained a few people - I was taught a lot by a Jedi named Tionne. She wasn't particularly strong in the Force, but she had a knack and ability for songs, and gathering and sharing lore and story. She was a good mentor." 

"What age were you trained?" Luke asked him. 

"I started at eleven at Yavin IV," Anakin replied simply. "I did some things before that with Mom, and with my siblings, but officially with the Jedi at eleven." 

Luke nodded. It was one of the first motions he'd made this entire time and Anakin watched him. 

It was proving difficult for Anakin to really get a sense of what was going on with his Uncle. While Luke had not pulled in as tightly after he'd revealed himself to Ren, he was still small in the Force. And while Anakin was used to that on some level, even at home it wasn't as if his Uncle typically went around broadcasting his emotions, but maybe because of the differences in everything else, Anakin felt as if he were having a more difficult time than usual figuring out what Luke was thinking. 

"I guess it's different than what you had," he offered, both as a way of acknowledging and perhaps hoping for some additional information without specifically verbalizing the request.

"A bit, yes," Luke offered without much in the way of explanation. 

The lack of explantaion was in and of itself so different from what Anakin was used to that his gaze snapped up to meet his Uncle's reflexively. As he realized he'd done that, given himself away as being startled by something, he looked down, but he didn't know whether he should call it out or not. It was perhaps somewhat pointless to do so - his Uncle couldn't know what Anakin was expecting from him. 

Yet, with Luke he was finding that he could put his finger on something that he'd noticed with his Mother but hadn'texpected to be a universal thing. He'd noticed it the least with Mara, but perhaps that was only to do with what he was expecting from her versus what he was expecting from his Mother and his Uncle. As he watched Luke he tried to think if he might be reading it wrong, but as he considered it, it felt consistent to him that both his Mother and his Uncle were turned more inward. Maybe that was consistent with the fall of Ren to the Dark Side. Obviously that wasn't something that had happened in Anakin's world. 

It was precisely the opposite that he'd found from others too. Neither Rey, nor Finn, nor Poe, had treated him that way. They'd been open and welcoming. Ren was closed off, but that didn't surprise Anakin, and even with Ren he felt as if he kept finding small ways to break through. 

Anakin took a second sip of the caf and looked up at Luke, bluntness suddenly feeling like the best approach. "Getting information from you or Mom is like pulling teeth from a Rancor." 

An eyebrow show up, but his Uncle didn't seem offended by his statement. "I should hope somewhat less violent," he mused. 

Anakin tilted his head, a slight roll of his eyes. "You know what I mean. I gave you the opportunity to share something about what you did in this galaxy, and you didn't take it. You know that when Mom, or General Leia, whatever, sent me off with Poe and a handful of other Resistance pilots to get information, she still hadn't told me that Kylo Ren was her son? My brother? I had to find that out the hard way, which is to say, I had to find it out while staring down his lightsaber. Not ideal." 

"No, that's rarely the way you want to start a family reunion," Luke agreed amiably.

The reasonableness of the response only irritated Anakin. "Which, presumably you know from experience," Anakin pointed out. "I don't know why you're all so tight. I don't know if it's Ren, or if it's something else, but I'm not used to this. You're my Master at home in the sense that you've been teaching me for a while. And, maybe it's been a bit rough recently because of the war at home, but you've always taken the time to explain things to me. Except, apparently here. And I don't know if that's because we don't have a relationship at all - if so, that's fair I guess - or if it's just something you don't do. Because if I'm being really honest here, I've watched you give more information to a brand new student than you just gave to me." 

"Our worlds have taken different pathways," Luke responded, and there was a curtness behind the words even if they weren't unkind. "Yours shaped you and your expectations of me in a different way than this one has shaped me. And I have no expectations of you because, as you mention we don't have a relationship. That you remind me so much of Han in looks, cannot be used as a shortcut." 

"I'm not asking for that," Anakin put his caf down and met his Uncle's blue eyes with his own. "I'm asking for maybe you to believe that I'm a Jedi, I'm trained, you trained me, and that I've been through a thing or two and maybe can be treated like you might a colleague, at least. If not a nephew." 

"Anakin," Luke shook his head. "You'll forgive me if I am slow to trust. Everything about this situation is strange, and while I've sought guidance, there's very little I feel certain of here. You are an unknown as much as Ren is." 

"Fine," Anakin could feel irritation building and while he wanted to have empathy for his Uncle, for his Mother, all he could think at the moment was that this man really wasn't his Uncle. 

Sure, he'd been frustrated at times with how Luke had handled the Yuuzhan Vong and the war. There had been times when he'd felt as if his Uncle had been frozen in place and unable to make any decision at all, but for the most part when Anakin had asked questions, he'd found Luke willing to explain or to ask questions in return and guide Anakin to building his own understanding with more certainty. 

There had been moments when Anakin had felt the need to push through with something on his own, and maybe some of those decisions had been mistakes - he regretted what had happened with Tahiri on Yavin IV for example - but he couldn't regret the fact that most of the Jedi trainees had been safely in space before the Peace Brigade got there, and he couldn't regret the learning that had come from him being required to go after Tahiri. He'd grown more in his understanding of the Force, and his capability, and his persistence in that one mission than he had for a year previously. And Myrkr - although it felt abruptly cut off to land him here - it had required him to work together with his brother and with the other Jedi to be a leader and someone they could look up to, while learning to release because he couldn't control everything. The odds were what they were. 

He pushed out a breath as that thought brought with it a reminder that he wanted to push away but couldn't afford to: He couldn't control everything. 

"Look if you won't talk to me about the past, I just ask that if there are things you think will blind side me, or make it worse, that you please tell me," Anakin tried to keep his voice calm, which was easier to do when he released the frustration and funneled it back into the reminder that it he ought not hold Luke to expectations that existed for another man entirely. For whatever the genetics might say, the nurturing of experience had created a different personality and history and understanding of the galaxy. It was unfair to expect this Luke to be his Uncle. 

The older man in front of him seemed to consider this request and for a moment, Anakin thought he might out-right deny it, but then he stepped forward. "I had hoped to pass on the knowledge I gained, to rebuild the Jedi," something in Luke's eyes darkened. "That didn't happen -"

"Yet," Anakin pointed out. "Rey and Finn -"

"Are Force sensitive, yes, but not Jedi."

"Rey came into the temple with me when no one else did," Anakin countered. "She may be more of a Jedi than you think." 

Something in the blue eyes flickered, and Luke lifted his hand to put on Anakin's shoulder. "I hope the sort of relationship you expect from me is something that we can build, but it will be different because we are not the same. We are different men, with different histories, and different understandings, and thus, I can only be for you who I am, not who he was." 

"I get that. I do," Anakin looked up and met Luke's gaze again.

"You don't have Han's eyes." 

"What?" 

"That blue is not Han's. That's Skywalker blue." 

Anakin couldn't quite keep the lopsided grin off of his face. "I'm sure the other you had this conversation when you met me when I was a baby."

Luke smirked. "The acknowledgment must come at some point."

Anakin rolled his eyes, but this was good natured, and the contentious spirit of earlier seemed to have passed through him. Acknowledging the frustration, both to himself and to Luke, seemed to have cleared at least some of the air. He reached for the caf mug again and took a sip, and when he put it down he turned back to the older Jedi. 

"How do you keep yourself so small? In the Force I mean?" 

Luke raised an eyebrow. "That wasn't something you have been taught?" 

"Not so much, I mean, I suppose in some ways, just the keeping thoughts to one's self, and that sort of thing, but not… your whole presence. And that's what you were doing wasn't it? It's why you didn't tell Ren you were here right away, and why he was startled by seeing you."

Luke nodded and sank down to the floor in a typical meditation and learning pose. Anakin recognized it, and followed him. 

"It's about recognizing the ripples you make in the Force. When you move, think, what do you do that pushes out into the Force? Once you can know that, then you can minimize those spaces and that movement in such a way that it can make your presence nearly invisible to someone who does not know you very well, or who does not look for the deep revelation." 

"That feels like a flip of what I did to 'feel' the Yuuzhan Vong." 

"Tell me," Luke suggested quietly. 

"I told you about the war before, the main instigators are a group of aliens from the Unknown Regions. Well, presumably. They may be from outside the galaxy entirely - there's still a lot we don't know. But they aren't felt in the Force. They don't seem to have it in them, or be influenced by it like other living creatures are. It makes it really difficult to fight them, especially when, as a Jedi, you're used to using the Force to react and hone instinct.

"A few months back they attacked Yavin IV - they wanted to collect the Jedi trainees there. I… went off to warn the Jedi who were there and most of the kids escaped, except my best friend, and a couple of others who were with us. The Yuuzhan Vong captured Tahiri, so I went after her," Anakin shrugged. "Along the way I ended up working with one of their Shamed warriors, and learning a lot about them, and the Force, but the other thing I realized is that I could use the environment around the Yuuzhan Vong to 'feel' them. They might not be in the Force, but they still made an imprint in it - a sort of empty space, if you will. Because while they didn't operate within the Force they still impacted it in the world around them. So… I started looking for the blank spaces." 

Luke had started nodding towards the end of Anakin's words. "It isn't exactly the same, but the underlying principle there is similar. To do it well, you have to know yourself well. All of the edges that you push against, the blind spots you have. It's not simple to do - particularly around, as you say, people who know you well and with whom you may have a pre-existing Force connection with. You're seeking to create a seamless edge between yourself and the Force around you, so that people will easily overlook you being there." 

"That sounds doable," Anakin remarked, even though he suspected that the doing of would be a lot more difficult to accomplish than what his Uncle was making it sounded like. 

"If you are serious about it," Luke stated. "Your meditations will be the first place to begin and I could work with you tomorrow morning if you're interested."

"I am," Anakin nodded, trying not to appear too eager, even though just the small offering helped him feel on more even ground. He was used to being trained by his Uncle. He wasn't used to being the person who had it all figured out. Too frequently since he'd arrived here, he'd felt as if people kept deferring to him as the expert, but he didn't have that much experience, and being deferred to so frequently had only served to remind him of what he did not yet know and long for the ability to lean on someone who had a bit more experience than him. It was a small opportunity, but this would still provide that in a microcosm, and Anakin was grateful for that. 

After the morning's breakfast, Anakin had followed Tenel Ka to a library in the far wing of the palace. Ren had been surrendered into Mara's oversight, and Anakin planned on trying to determine - to the best of his ability - if there was any connection between Vjun and the temple and Snoke, or if it was simply the connection of Vader that had brought them all together there. 

The library, as might be expected in a palace, had both traditional paper books and datapads and holonet access. There had been books like this in the Imperial Palace as well, and they were truly beautiful pieces of art if not always the most efficient way to share information. And while Anakin was familiar with them, he didn't think that was where he needed to start. So after a brief survey of the shelves around the room, looking at titles, pulling a couple off of the shelf more out of personal interest than anything else, he settled in a chair near the window, a datapad and holonet access point with him. 

The difficulty was, of course, that why would any such connection exist easily? If Zayna had found Vjun buried in Imperial data, why would finding the link back be something simple, or obvious? It didn't take much beyond an hour for him to wish for Zayna in his current search, or wish that he'd spent more time in libraries and with data recently. But why would he have? When the galaxy was tearing itself apart around you, going to the library wasn't your typical first course of action, and it had been a long time since he'd found solace in his mother's office, just reading. The nearest to that had been the reading he'd been doing when he first arrived here. But that reading had been superficial, or easily sourced in many ways. It had been basic data, encyclopedic knowledge, and nothing that was hidden. The hidden pieces had, in fact, been the things that had taken him off guard. 

Frustrated by the most recent dead end, Anakin pushed at his temples, and raised his head to stare off into the outdoors in the window in front of him. Perhaps he was wasting his time and there was nothing to be found. But while they sat and debated what the next choice was, he had hoped that finding out something about the old Temple might give them some clue, lead them forward into the choice that they needed to take. Instead he found his head hurting, eyes wanting to stop looking at a screen or holos, and once again a niggling doubt about what it was they could accomplish in the first place. 

Not unlike in his own world, a lot of data leads had given him loose ends. References were sending him spiraling into data black holes where nothing seemed to exist, and it was easy to fall in and not come out. If he had time, he would physically visit Ossus and see if he could dig something up, but the time was a question all of its own. Did they have time? Anakin tended to think not really. 

He pushed his head back, rubbing the back of his neck with his hands, and finally setting the datapad to the side. If the light in the room were anything to go by, it was early afternoon, and he had nothing to show for it. It was frustrating, for it had seemed obvious to him that there would be a connection. 

Or maybe, he had just _wanted_ for there to be one. Afterall, Zayna had given him the information about the temple and he'd thought it wouldn't be important, but then they'd stumbled across the Temple itself. That felt like more than a coincidence to Anakin - even if he were being as absolutely objective as he could possibly manage. The way they had ended at the cave and been forced into it with the weather, it had put them right there to discover it, and what had been said to him within about the Temple, how it had closed, the space becoming tainted. At the time it had felt important, but today, sitting in a Hapan palace, Anakin was doubting his ability to discern was was truly important and what wasn't. 

He stood up, stretched, and headed to the center of the room to try to meditate. The meditation was a standing one, and Anakin closed his eyes against the visual stimuli as he stood surrounded by books, wooden shelves and leather covered furniture - the classic grand looks punctuated by the more at times fanciful and at times dangerous Hapan style. 

Unfortunately he was finding it difficult to really sink into the meditation and it was reminding Anakin that he really would prefer to be doing something -- moving towards some end goal. While it had made sense to find someplace to regroup in the immediate aftermath of everything on Vjun staying here on Hapes was making him edgy.

Somewhere out there, Snoke was still operating. There was the possibility that Ren was still serving the First Order. While it wasn't a thought Anakin wanted to give much credence to, he couldn't entirely delete it either. And the thing with the Temple from where he was sitting at the moment felt more and more like a distraction. Like something he was spending time researching and uncovering information about - or rather not uncovering information about - that wasn't going to push them towards the end point that they needed, the defeat of Snoke, and the First Order. 

Anakin's eyes came open and he stared at the shelves across the wall, his head pounding more persistently. One of the more difficult problems was, that even if he chose to ignore Vjun and the Temple, the question of how to approach Snoke was still really muddy. 

"Rushing in without a plan isn't going to get you anywhere," he muttered to himself as he pushed his fingers against his temples to massage away the headache. "Well, nowhere except possibly killed, or someone else possibly hurt. Just look at Yavin IV. You don't even have a feeling that you need to rush in, other than just discomfort about being here right now."

And as much as he'd like to call on the Force for ideas, he knew this was right. Underneath everything was a lingering question about Vjun, but he didn't have any specific push that said leave this place right now and go here. It wasn't the same as Yavin IV, if it had been then he would have considered that sort of rush in and figure it out as you go, but it wasn't. It was more like Myrkr, that sense that he needed to do something and soon, but that they needed a plan before they could do it. 

And that placed him back at the beginning. 

He let his breath out in a frustrated whoosh and left the library. Some fresh air and a walk around the grounds at least held the potential of a change of scenery, even if it didn't help him to come up with an answer. 

Answers were more elusive to come by than Anakin wanted them to be. He was finding it difficult to approach this problem, so much different was it from what he had been dealing with at home. At home the Yuuzhan Vong hadn't been a question of the Force - well, at least not in the immediate sense - but this was very much a question of the Force, the Jedi, the Sith, and history that Anakin neither had knowledge of, nor a clear way to get to. He felt some sympathy for his Uncle all those years trying to build something in the Force and with the Jedi without any real knowledge of how to do it. 

If he'd hoped meditation the next morning would open a door, he'd forgotten that he'd told Ren that he would practice meditation with him. And while Anakin was glad to do so it meant that his own mind was less focused on the problem at hand than he would have liked. As a result of the meditation he and Ren were late to breakfast so they walked into a full room. 

"Hey Jedi." 

The familiar voice made Anakin blink and then a huge grin spread over his face as he noted Zayna sitting between Rey and Poe Dameron on the table. 

"What are you guys doing here?" 

Anakin's delight in seeing them was not mirrored on Poe's face. Anakin suspected this had to do with the taller brother behind him. It wasn't surprise that he saw though, so Poe and Zayna must have been filled in on the fact that Ren was here in the first place, but Poe's attention was hard to shake from Ren's figure. 

"We came in a bit ago," he responded vaguely to Anakin's question. "It's good to see you again." 

The you was pointedly directed at Anakin,but Anakin decided not to make a point of it. "Yeah, it's been a bit of a journey," he responded a little on the vague side himself. He didn't know what Mara or Rey had told Poe and maybe he'd have a conversation with him later about some of the details but it felt awkward to be very specific with them here and now. "I didn't know you were coming." 

"None of us did," Rey looked pointedly at Mara. "Well, almost none of us." 

Mara's expression didn't seem to change except a twitch of her lips that Anakin might have imagined. 

"Well, it's really good to see you both," Anakin affirmed. And it was surprisingly good to see them. With everything so wrapped up in his family and people who were connected to his family at home, seeing Poe and Zayna, two people who were new friends with no old expectations for what their relationship should be like was almost like a drink of cold water on a hot day.

Ren had apparently decided to go for the food and ignore the newcomers, which was maybe just as well. Anakin followed him though, going to get food even as his mind raced at the implications of Poe and Zayna being here. He suspected there was a reason, and if Mara was aware of their coming here then he suspected that she'd been in contact with the General, and there was something afoot, but he didn't know if they would get to know about it or not. At the rate at which he could feel Poe's discontent with Ren being there, he wondered. 

Food retrieved, he returned to the table and to an uncomfortable bit of conversation. Ren refused to say much of anything, and Poe was obviously uncomfortable with him there. Anakin could hardly blame him for that, any more than he could blame Rey for her uncertainty, but it was all pushing up against his determination to try to give Ren a chance at taking what he said at face value. The problem was that Anakin couldn't demand that others do that, and any point that conversation about what or why they were there came up, Poe would evade the conversation. 

"I kinda pretty much never thought I'd be anywhere in the Hapes Consortium," Zayna had finished most of her food and was sipping on caf. 

"We are glad to host you," Tenel Ka remarked wryly. "Is it as mysterious as the legends suggest?" 

"I haven't decided yet," Zayna returned equally good natured. 

If she were put on edge by Ren, she was hiding it a lot better than Poe was. And perhaps, although she'd been with Anakin when they'd met Kylo Ren, having not had your mind invaded by him allowed you to approach the situation with more space to it. Probably, Anakin thought dryly. 

"We do have business we should discuss," Poe remarked, and glanced pointedly at Ren. 

"Discuss it then," Ren returned, his gaze piercing Poe's.

"I'm not discussing it with him here," Poe said simply. "Perhaps you've all decided he's trustworthy, but the last time I saw him, he was pulling information from my mind. If he wants what I have to say he'll have to do that again."

"Don't tempt me," Ren remarked snidely. 

"Will you walk with me, Ren?" Tenel Ka stood, her hand extended towards him. "I have a few things I would like to speak with you about anyway." 

Ren knew that he was being removed from the room and everyone else did as well. Anakin half expected him to protest it, or to dig his heels in but he was pleasantly surprised when Ren pushed his chair back from the table and got to his feet. 

"Very well," he gave Poe a glare before turning his attention to Tenel Ka. "Let's leave them to their war." 

Poe's cheek twitched, no doubt at the implication that the war was his and had nothing to do with Ren, but he seemed to control the inclination to snark something in return, which likely was just as well. While Ren was obviously trying to needle them, Anakin thought deescalating the situation to keep movement in what they were doing was going to be a lot more productive in the end even if a verbal joust might feel satisfying in the short term. 

"It's possible he may be able to help us," Anakin suggested softly, as Tenel Ka and Ren walked away. It was loud enough that Ren probably heard him, but if he did, he paid no mind. 

"Perhaps, or perhaps his ears straight to the First Order," Poe returned flatly. "I'm not taking the risk. He can get to what we're saying anyway more than likely, but I'm not giving it to him easily." 

Zayna stood up and as she did so, she scooped up Anakin's empty cup as well and returned with both hers and Anakin's cups filled with caf. 

"Just tell me that if I think he can help with something, then I can bring him in," Anakin persisted.

"You really trust him?" This question came from Zayna rather than Poe, and Anakin could see Rey barely shrug. 

Anakin looked straight across at her. "I think the reasons he has to be angry with Snoke are as legitmate as any we have. He may not be exactly on the same side as the Resistance, but right now we both want to see Snoke defeated, so in that sense, yes."

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," Zayna retorted, and there was light skepticism in her look.

"This isn't about Snoke, at least not specifically," Poe sat up and met Anakin's gaze. With Ren's departure he seemed to have dropped the vagaries. "The Resistance needs to push back against the First Order's military. Ever since Hosnian Prime they've gotten bolder, they're moving further and further in and they'll hit additional core worlds. If we don't start pushing back in a significant way, not only are we not protecting the Republic, we're going to lose Republic worlds to them." 

"That's why you're here?" Rey asked. 

"The General believes it's the best move," Poe nodded. "She put us in contact with Mara hoping that she could connect us with you." 

"Why?" Finn had leaned forward on the table, his look openly uncertain. 

"Because she wants Jedi involved," Zayna replied airily. "Apparently she thinks you guys will be the turning point for the entire Resistance." 

Poe glanced over at Zayna and shook his head. "That's not exactly the straight of it, but she was hoping that the Jedi could help support the Resistance in areas. You're a good pilot Rey, and Anakin too. Putting the two of you and the Force in my squadron would give us a significant advantage." 

"Finn's been learning the Force too," Rey glanced over and Anakin noticed that she slid the hand next to Finn under the table. Finn's hand nearest Rey was also under the table. 

Poe didn't seem taken aback by this information at all, maybe he was expecting it from Mara already. "We'll have need of ground troops too, and possibly even some special missions. Those things are still in the planning stage, largely, but the important thing is will you all come back?" 

"I'm not certain exactly what we can do that the Resistance can't," Rey tilted her head. 

"You can fly, like I said, and morale," Poe glanced up at her. 

"Morale?" Anakin's brows furrowed. "In other words, my Mom wants the Resistance to know Jedi are fighting along with them." 

"That's kinda more or less the jest of it yeah," Zayna responded, before Poe could. If Poe was irritated at her forthrightness he didn't show it. 

Poe looked over at Luke Skywalker for a moment and then back to Anakin. "We had a whole system destroyed just before you got here. It's Alderaan all over again. You surely have some understanding of-"

"Yeah, I do," Anakin's frown hadn't gone away. "But we aren't political, or we shouldn't be. That's a lesson that I think we've been slow to learn in our galaxy, but that doesn't make it less true. Jedi aren't here to fight for a government, or even a resistance necessarily. We need to seek justice, peace, but it may not be alongside soldiers." 

"What are you saying?" Rey had glanced over at him.

"I'm saying our priority has to be Snoke still. It's not that I don't think what Poe's talking about isn't important - it is. But it doesn't matter how many Star Desteroyers or whatever we bring down if the puppet behind the strings is still active. So long as Supreme Leader Snoke is out there using the Force against all of us, there's a greater danger that only Jedi can address. I don't think anyone else can, and we can't lose our focus." 

"If the Jedi aren't fighting with the population of the galaxy, then what use are you?" 

Zayna's criticism wasn't unexpected. Anakin didn't see his Uncle flinch, but in the Force there was the subtle feeling of a dig received. 

"We're not abandoning the population, Zayna." Anakin looked over at her, before his eyes turned back to Poe. "This is like my Mom assigning you to ground troops instead of an X-wing. You know where you're needed and where you can serve the Resistance best. So do I. And Snoke is the queen behind all the First Order's workers in a manner of speaking. If we remove him, the workers will become confused and disoriented, and the Resistance can succeed better. But we can't do that if we come back now. If my Uncle hadn't taken out the Emperor at Endor, would the Alliance have won?"' Anakin persisted, despite Poe's frown.

"How are you going to take out Snoke?" Poe asked flatly. "You've got Snoke's lapdog here, how am I to know you're not under his influence." 

"We aren't," Rey spoke up. "I know what that feels like when he tries to do that, and he hasn't tried once since he came with us. It's one of the fes commendations that I can give him. Also I'm not really trained to fly X-wings."

"Yeah, but Poe has a point. We don't even know what our next step is," Finn pointed out. "And psycho Solo isn't helping much. You've flown the Falcon, and you told me you'd run all those simulators, you can't tell me there wasn't an X-wing in there somewhere."

"We're going to come up with a plan for Snoke; that's what we're working on right now," Anakin's mouth felt drier than he liked. He suspected he was upsetting Dameron, and the man had been one of his first friends here, but he also knew what he felt was right. He glanced down to the end of the table where neither Mara nor Luke had said anything. He couldn't tell if they were withholding words, or if they simply had nothing to say. 

He also knew what felt right in this situation, and he supposed over his last year of experience with war he was jaded when it came to specific situations with military bodies. Even if the Resistance here was not the New Republic military at home, in fact was somewhat the opposite of it, he still wasn't certain about tying himself as a Jedi to them. He would help, where he could, but right now Snoke still struck him as the biggest thing on the table. Like the Vronskrs - they couldn't move forward until that was dealt with. 

"Snoke needs to go," he said finally. "That's all I know." 

There was that feeling of unease that despite his belief that this was the right choice that maybe he had it wrong, especially when nobody else had really stuck up to agree with him. And he supposed that what he really meant by that was Luke or Mara. He stood up, suddenly restless, and he shrugged: "That's just my view. We need to take care of the Supreme Leader - and we'll decapitate the First Order and that's going to be more help to the Resistance than anything we can do on the ground with them." 

He left the room, although it was unclear where he was going to go. Maybe to find Ren. It seemed unlikely that Ren wasn't going to agree with him in regards to going after Snoke, although that maybe wasn't the best support for his sense of things either. Outside the dining room, he hesitated, and perhaps shouldn't have been surprised by Zayna's chipper voice behind him. 

"Hey Jedi Boy, how's it feel arguing with the golden boy of the resistance?" 

He turned, she was coming up behind him, a grin on her lips, and a mostly irreverent look on her face. Anakin sighed, and half rolled his eyes. "It's not that I don't see his point," he returned flatly. 

"I'm sure that'll smooth things over," Zayna chuckled. She motioned her head in front of them. "Show me around this place. I've got to go back and tell Jess and some of the others what the legendary Hapan palaces are like." 

Anakin raised an eyebrow, but he couldn't keep a chuckle from escaping as he fell into line beside her and stuffed his hands inside his pockets as they walked away from the dining area. 

"It's not that I think I'm above fighting alongside anyone," he looked over. "That's not what I'm trying to say at all." 

"I didn't say you were," Zayna glanced back at him. "There's no need to be defensive, but you've got to understand that the General sent Poe specifically for you and Rey, so if he doesn't come back with you then it's going to be a blow." 

"I get that. But these aren't normal times," Anakin said seriously. "And I'm not trying to be defensive, but I do believe that I'm doing the right thing here. I don't want to be perceived as arrogant." 

"I don't think that's what Poe would call you, exactly," Zayna said. "Although who am I to say. He might be calling you some colorful things right now. When you think about it, I'm letting you off the hook just calling you Jedi Boy." 

Anakin rolled his eyes at her, but there was fondness in the gesture. Somehow "Jedi Boy" didn't really feel like an insult from Zayna these days. Early in their relationship he'd been pretty certain she disliked him, but that had shifted recently. She was snarky, she poked at him, but she also seemed to level respect at him, and he could handle snarky and being poked at. In some cases it might even be necessary. Or at the very least it would help him not get too full of himself . "Snoke isn't normal. And it's not that I believe I can necessarily take him out on my own, but I do think it's important to take him out. I think everything else is slapping bacta patches on a larger problem, you know?" 

Zayna elbowed him and tilted her head briefly to their right, towards an open archway, and curious what she was thinking, Anakin found himself following her through it. The archway headed out onto a terracotta stone pathway, including steps that seemed to make their way down to the lake. Without asking him, Zayna took off down them. 

It hadn't been a consideration when he'd suggested landing on Hapes to regroup, but Anakin realized that the very location offered an amazing ability to relax into thinking about the process and what they could do next. It was a counter to the fast paced requirements of making decisions on the base - and while that could lead to a danger of complacency Anakin didn't think it was doing so right now. If anything, taking the time to think through the next move felt important. 

"This is incredible," Zayna's words were hushed as if she might disturb the peace of the lake that they were looking out on. 

Anakin stepped up beside her. The steps had ended below on a terracotta patio framed by trees right up to the edge of the lake. It looked reasonably well maintained although on the far right there were some cracks that suggested some work was likely required to the structure. Anakin wondered how long the patio had been there, but the palace above had been built centuries ago for the Hapan Royals, very likely this patio had been as well. 

"It's a gorgeous place," he stuck his hands in his pockets. "I've always thought so. It's pretty dangerous and wild though, and that's really represented in its population." 

"It's not as built up as Corellia," Zayna lifted one leg to put on the half meter fence that separated the patio from the edge down into the lake. 

"That's where you're from?" Anakin looked over, sounding more surprised than he probably ought to have been. Her last name should have been a clue if he'd been paying attention, however, a Corellian surname didn't necessarily mean that someone had grown up there. 

"Yep," Zayna looked over at him and grinned. "It's where my family is still. Well most of them. My brother, Rogan, he's flying with the Resistance." 

"I don't think I've met him." 

"Nope, you wouldn't have, he was with the Republic until shortly before Hosnian and now he's on one of General Celchu's ships." 

"Tycho Celchu?" Anakin asked. 

"Yeah," Zayna looked back over. "Let me guess, he's someone you know from home too." 

Anakin offered her a lopsided grin, but then sighed. "But not here." 

"Here you're starting over, and that's gotta be so strange." 

"I think it's less weird to meet new people I don't know from home than it is to meet people who should know me, but don't," Anakin answered, looking over at her. "You, Poe even if he's mad at me, are all easier to navigate than like Uncle Luke or Mom." 

"Yeah, I can get that. You expect them to know things about you, and they don't. You expect to know things about them, and you don't. It'd be really challenging to not act on your expected and anticipated knowledge, but they don't have any to even fall back on. The whole relationship would be unbalanced and how do you regain that balance? How do you _not_ act on what you know about them?" 

Anakin looked over at her. "That's kinda pretty much it yeah." 

She offered him a smile and then leaned forward to put her hands on her knee. Anakin watched her for a moment before turning his attention back out to the lake. If this was an attempt to change his mind he didn't think it was really working that well. Snoke needed to be dealt with. Others would carry the fight with the Resistance. But only he and Ren and Rey could deal with Snoke. Then again - maybe he was being too cynical. Maybe this was just two friends walking. He could call Zayna a friend, right? 

"Did you find anything about that temple?" She asked suddenly.

"Yeah, actually," Anakin looked back to her. "We found the temple." 

"You found it?" Zayna looked up at him. "Really?" 

"Yeah, it was… I'd say it was an accident, but I'm not sure it was. That's one of those things I'm honestly trying to figure out right now. But we found it on the way up to Vader's fortress, buried in the mountain that Vader's fortress was built on. I don't think it was coincidence that led us to it. I think it was the Force. I'm just not certain what that means." 

"What was it like?" 

"Eerie," Anakin admitted with a short laugh. "Empty, for starters. Huge and awe inspiring. There was a definite strength to the Force in the place, but not just the light side and that was the part that was kinda weird. This trip has me admitting how much I don't know still about the Force, and I haven't really had the time to talk to Uncle Luke about it." He wasn't going to add that Luke might not talk to him so openly as he was used to. 

"Did it give you something valuable?" Zayna asked. 

"I don't know," Anakin shook his head. 

"When we were in that chamber with the what did you call it -"

"Holocron?"

"Yeah, that. It was almost like I could feel something. It's like that sense that says, don't stay in this place, it's not safe." 

Anakin looked over and raised an eyebrow. "You might be a little Force sensitive." 

"I'm not a Jedi."

"Yeah, but the Force isn't just for Jedi. Other people can pick up on pieces of it, tap into it, just maybe not at the level I can. My Dad's always been really lucky - but I think he's more Force sensitive maybe than anyone really thinks. It's just not Jedi levels." 

"You know a year ago there was basically one Jedi in the galaxy." 

"There's more than that now," Anakin brought his head up. Luke, himself, Rey - if the temple was to be believed. Finn was well on his way to learning. Who knew what Mara considered herself, or what Ren would, but both had the Force and could use it. 

"Yeah, there is." 

Something about the way she said this turned Anakin's head over to look at her. She was watching him with an intent gaze and when he didn't say anything she sighed as if she were exasperated. 

"How many Jedi are needed to take down Snoke?"

Anakin frowned at this. The answer to the question of course was 'he didn't know', but he thought he knew what Zayna was getting at. 

"Maybe some of you go back to fight with the Resistance, to help them gain strength and hope, and some of you fight Snoke. Maybe it's not a zero sum of one or the other. Maybe both are necessary." 

"I know Poe doesn't get this, but I think we need to have Ren in this conversation. We're not talking about specific battle plans here - at least not where the Resistance is concerned - we're talking about making general plans and it has to do with Snoke, which Ren is a part of that conversation." 

"Do you think he's trustworthy?" 

"I don't know Zayna, but I know that he's come with us, he hasn't yet hurt anyone, and that he seems to be genuine in his dislike of Snoke. I don't think I'd call him a Jedi, or even say that he's operating from the light, but there are cracks in that armor of darkness, and I have to believe there's the possibility he'll choose the light if believed in." 

"That's a hell of a risk, Jedi Boy." 

"Yeah, it is," Anakin admitted, and there was a relief in being able to do so to someone rather than keep up the front that defended Ren's chances, something he kept feeling obligated to do around the others. "But he is my brother. At least, the closest thing I've got here. If it were Jacen, I'd want someone to give him that chance. Besides -" Anakin frowned. "I still dream of becoming what Kylo Ren became." 

It had been a while since he'd had one of those dreams, but they were there still. And every so often they would creep in.To a degree it was odd that he'd had so few in the past few weeks. A bird trilled in a tree nearby and Anakin turned towards Zayna. 

"I know what it's like to grow up with the shadow of that darkness and even if it wasn't precisely the same for Ren, if it were me that had been pulled into that then I'd want someone to try to help pull me out. I'd want someone who'd be willing to help guide me towards better choices. Someone who wasn't going to give up on the fact that there was still light in me. If Uncle Luke hadn't believed that, Vader wouldn't have come back at the end. And I don't know what the end will be for me or Ren or the galaxy." 

Anakin stuffed his hands in his pockets knowing that the type of hope he was persisting in was probably slightly mad. Somehow it was easier to admit that in front of Zayna who had seemed to start from the premise that he was slightly crazy in the first place. "Maybe I'll end up dead for my trouble, but I have a difficult time believing that the hope of light is ever anything but worth the risk."


	5. Rey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo... I got a little sidetracked this month, wonder why? :) 
> 
> I'm not certain if Chapter Six will be before the new year or not. I've reached a point where I need to do some additional behind the scenes work, so I'm going to be trying to work on that and writing, and editing, so it may be January, but here's a Christmas gift for everyone who's reading.

There were mornings when Rey woke up and promptly wished herself back on Jakku. 

That wish was mostly a lie, and the thought was sent off as quickly as it came, but when she'd wished for family again she hadn't imagined it being this complicated. At the time family had been what Han Solo, her father, had promised for a fleeting moment to be - an escape into being wanted instead of expendable. She did feel wanted, but it felt less of an escape, and more of a responsibility than she'd ever dreamed it might. 

She reminded herself this morning as she sat in a room of unlikely heroes and one probable villain that even if Han were here and alive it wouldn't have changed the escape part having drifted away like the childhood fantasy that it was. The family that she'd dreamed of might exist for some girls, and maybe once upon a time it had even existed for her. Overall, the memories she'd been able to pull out of her brain about her years before Jakku were pleasant enough, but that family wasn't any longer. It had been an illusion that had crashed and burned for her a long time before Darth Vader's identity as her grandfather had been revealed to the galaxy. 

Instead she found herself with a more complicated family. A father that had been murdered by her brother -- A brother who she found herself still wanting to smack. Another brother that had somehow arrived in this galaxy and into this moment despite having been born in a different one. An Uncle whom she suspected would have preferred to have stayed exploring the Force on Ach To. A mother who was asking them to come back and help her. And then there were the others. Finn, Mara, Chewbacca - they were all family in their own way, the ones she'd chosen, she supposed. 

Anakin was standing near the window. Sometimes it was easy to forget that he was younger than she was. Likely because although he was younger, he'd experienced a lot in his own galaxy. He'd told her enough of it for her to know that he'd had practice leading, and sometimes when he stood up she saw their Mom. 

Luke was the only other person standing. Her Uncle was standing opposite of Anakin, his eyes able to take in the entire room from where he was. Rey could tell this had made Ren uncomfortable, and he'd seated himself at a point between Anakin and Luke, where his eyes could easily focus on both of them. Rey had taken the place across from Ren, so between herself, Anakin, and Luke, surely he couldn't do anything. (And she at times felt guilty for thinking he still might, but she didn't trust him, he had killed his own father, what would he care about a sister?) 

Beside her on one side was Finn, next to him Poe. Zayna Ardellian had taken a place near the front while Mara and Tenel Ka had hung back, a power duo that could easily flank Luke if necessary. Chewbacca was near Anakin, perhaps also watching Ren. It was possible everyone in the room besides Anakin was watching Ren, which really should tell you something about the situation shouldn't it? 

"I spent quite a bit of time in meditation yesterday," Anakin was saying. "And I still believe what I said yesterday about Snoke," he looked pointedly at Poe. "But Zayna made a few good points that I probably should have thought of myself, but didn't." 

There was a moment's silence and then it seemed to hit Zayna that Anakin was expecting her to say something. She straightened up, and tossed her hair back over her shoulder slightly. "All right, well, uh... " Zayna glanced around the room almost as if she were taking a count of the people that were there. "Most of you don't know me, and I admit that I pretty much found the whole Force, Jedi thing to be likely made-up. And then I met Anakin, and he did a couple of kind of incredible things, and it required that I sort of rethink what I thought about all of it." 

She stopped to shoot Anakin a quick grin and then she turned around to the others. She glanced at Ren, and Rey could sense some uneasiness, but she continued despite it. "General Organa tasked us with bringing back Jedi. That's what Poe and I were supposed to come here and do. And not so long ago, that would have simply been bringing back one person, but that's changing. I guess. I mean, Anakin is obviously a Jedi, even if he wasn't always in this galaxy, and uh…" she looked at Luke, searching for what to call him before finally settling in on something. "Jedi Skywalker obviously is as well. And Rey's been training. So that's three. Bringing a Jedi back doesn't mean bringing everyone back." 

"And it's not just Rey and Uncle Luke and I," Anakin stepped in. "Finn's been training too, and has gotten a lot better. Mara's got some knowledge, as does Tenel Ka, and Ren." 

"I'm not a Jedi," Ren's words were instantaneous, but sounded more bored than defensive. 

"He's also not likely to prove the inspirational boost the Resistance needs," Poe stated dryly.

"Yeah, not everyone here is Jedi, but we've got a lot of people with training in the Force, and we really only need one Jedi to take back to the Resistance for inspiration, there's a lot of different places that people can help spread light in the galaxy," Zayna spoke up. 

"That almost sounded like a Jedi," Anakin looked bemused at her. 

"I think you're stretching it if you think he's going to add much in the way of light," Poe's gaze was dark on Ren. 

"Only the future is going to tell us that," Anakin interceded, attention pulled off of Zayna and back to Poe. "And it's impossible to know the future. Regardless, I wouldn't suggest sending Ren back to the Resistance for any number of reasons, but he wants to bring Snoke down, and he knows the most about Snoke, so he's better suited for that task."

"This makes sense though," Rey looked between all of them, and despite the fact that there was still uncertainty with Ren, she was feeling better than she had since Poe had arrived. The idea of her mother asking for Jedi to come and help and then them not going back to her hadn’t set well with Rey. "And helping the resistance with the First Order is important too." 

Even if she agreed generally with Anakin about Snoke. She might not know exactly what they needed to do with the Supreme Leader, but he had corrupted the brother she'd once known. And Rey could remember Ben. Oh, sure they were faded bits and pieces of memories, just tiny snippets like a broken holovid, but she knew he'd been someone who had cared about other people once. He'd wanted to be a hero, and instead he'd become twisted into something Rey still couldn't begin to understand. It infuriated her, and while she suspected there was danger in that anger, she didn't know exactly how to dispense with it.

But her own thoughts aside, she couldn't imagine showing back up to her mother with Ren. How would she react to that? And that was more important to Rey than even how the Resistance would. 

"We need to take out Snoke," Ren was unmovable. "He is our priority. We go there first."

"I didn't say we don't," Rey turned her gaze to the brother she felt as if she no longer knew or recognized at all. "I don't think that's what any of us are saying. Zayna is just saying that there is more than one of us here that could go after Snoke and more than one of us that could return with her and Poe to the Resistance." 

"But Snoke is the priority for you," Ren persisted. 

"You don't get to say what the priority is," Rey bristled at the proprietary sound of Ren's words. "And the Resistance needs Jedi. And right now we don't know what we're doing with Snoke and the Resistance needs resources. Going there may be a better use of the resources."

"No," Ren was growing more agitated, and she could see him glance at Anakin as if hoping for some backup. "Snoke needs to be the priority. It may take time for us to figure out how to bring him down, but he has to be destroyed." 

"This isn't a revenge mission," Luke's words were calm, but they reached out throughout the entire room reminding everyone that he was there and listening. 

"Maybe not for you," Ren's gaze shifted to his uncle, his brows furrowed darkly over equally dark eyes. "But I was lied to, and manipulated, and I want to see him torn apart." 

"You're coming from a place of anger -"

"Kriff yes I am, and I will, and you don't get to tell me how I'm going to react." 

"There's nothing saying that you aren't still being lied to or manipulated. I still don't understand why you're here," Finn shifted next to Rey and she could feel the tension that was laced through him. Tension was laced throughout the room. She didn't think Ren would try anything, but Poe was watching him carefully, warily, and even Anakin didn't seem entirely comfortable. 

Finn shifted and stared at Ren. "We don't know that you're not going to turn on all of us at the end of this and go back to the First Order. Use us to get rid of your competition, your master or whatever, and then go back and take it over yourself. You want to do something useful? Tell us something about the First Order, the _Finalizer_ \- things I can't tell them - that would help anyone who goes back to the Resistance take the ship out." 

Ren's jaw twitched and his gaze was hot and intent on Finn's. "The _Finalizer_ isn't the only ship." 

"No, but it's Hux's ship." 

"You can't just take out one ship and expect to win this. There's a lot besides the _Finalizer_. Snoke, though, remove him, and you might win something." 

"You're not going to give us anything are you?" Poe shook his head, seemingly disgusted. "He's not on our side. I don't know whose side he's on, but it's not ours. His own maybe. Which means this whole conversation is not only pointless, but dangerous. We're sitting here giving him information that he very likely is feeding back to Hux somehow."

"I haven't been in contact with Hux since I left Vjun," Ren's anger spiked hotly, but Rey couldn't entirely determine the source. Not that he was being accused of providing information to the First Order, but something else that lay further under the surface. "You know nothing about me and you know nothing about my motivations." 

"Yeah, that's the problem isn't it?" Poe threw back. "We don't know your motivations, but you're here listening to us talk about what we're going to do. And your loyalties aren't in this room. They're to yourself, or worse to the First Order." 

"I'm not loyal to Snoke," Ren stood up, and as he did, Anakin, Finn, Poe and Rey followed the motion. "I've never cared that much about the First Order. They're a means to an end." 

"And the end is still there, and if they're the means to that end, then I can't imagine we're going to like that end. But if you're not loyal to the First Order or Snoke, why won't you give us information about the _Finalizer_? What are you protecting?" Poe was staring at him as if possibly he could Jedi mind trick him into giving out information. 

"I'm not protecting anything," Ren snapped. "There's nothing there I care about. Nothing I say will matter to any of you because you think you know me and my motivations, and you're ascribing your own stories to me anyway, and none of you trust me." 

"Because you've given us no reason to," Finn pointed out.

"We're not getting anywhere," Anakin stated evenly.

Rey had to agree with this assessment, but she also wasn't certain what anyone expected when you mixed this group of people together and added the instability of Ren into it. 

"Poe, give us twenty-four hours?" Finn said beside her and she found herself nodding to the suggestion. "Zayna's suggestion is a solid one and we want to help the Resistance, but we've barely had time to sort out what we've got on Snoke, and we've got this firework in our midst. We need to time to figure out what our next step is." 

Poe's cheek twitched slightly but he nodded. "We will need to leave tomorrow though, and meet back up with them." 

"Then we'll have something for you tomorrow," Anakin promised as Rey nodded in agreement with Finn and Anakin. 

Ren still looked murderous, but he hadn't yet murdered anyone which felt like progress of some sort, although Rey wasn't certain what the progress was exactly. Poe and Zayna had gotten up first to head towards the door. Anakin seemed half inclined to follow them and half to stay there. Rey motioned him away, and took a step towards Ren who hadn't moved. 

"Ren, we need to talk," she told him as calmly as she could. 

His eyes moved to examining her and she could feel him pushing at the boundaries of her mind. 

"Stop that," she told him furiously and to her surprise, there was an immediate withdrawal, followed by a drop in his gaze away from her. Well, there was another possible inch of progress, but again it was difficult to say. "You know as long as you don't get us anything on the First Order, we're going to have a difficult time trusting you."

The others had largely left the room by this point and Luke seeming to understand that Rey had this, needed to have it anyway, stepped out as well leaving her alone with her brother. It wasn't the first time that she had been, but it was near one of the only ones. The last time they'd been alone, she'd been fighting him with a lightsaber. This time the disagreement promised to be parsed mostly with words. 

"So if I give you things on the First Order, you'll suddenly start trusting me," Ren returned, the mocking tone of his voice unmistakable. "Forgive me if I don't believe that," he sneered. "You haven't trusted me since you saw me. My identity doesn't matter to you, and the only person who seems to trust me at all is a brother that isn't even mine." 

"Your identity doesn't matter to me?" Rey returned incredulous. "You've got to be kidding. Did our _father's_ identity matter when you speared him with that weapon of yours?" 

"You don't understand," Ren began.

"No, you're right, I don't and I don't want to," Rey stepped closer to him. "You killed our father. That was you: My _brother_. And you are nothing like I remember you. So forgive me if I don't entirely trust you. Maybe Anakin can do it because maybe you both are and aren't his brother, but I can't. And your refusal to give us anything that we ask does nothing to increase any trust that I might be able to muster. It's almost as if you still want the First Order to succeed, while you use us to help you defeat Snoke, and then there's very little to suggest that you won't turn on us and return to them." 

"That's not my plan," Ren glared. "I don't want to hurt you - I've never wanted to hurt you. I wanted to teach you, those are different things." 

"You want a follower, an apprentice? I'm not going to be your apprentice, Ren. I'm your sister. And I happen to think that the choices you've made are pretty messed up. And the First Order is evil." 

"The only thing the First Order did is to try to create safety and order in a galaxy that has none." 

"Safety?" Rey stared at him again. "You blew up an entire system -"

"I didn't do that -"

"Then you stood by while other people did. You did nothing. You're complicit in that." 

Ren's jaw tightened. "What does it matter?" 

"I can't believe you just asked that. My brother who was willing to risk leaving me alone to go help total strangers -"

"That wasn't my fault!" 

There was a flash of deep pain that resonated in the Force, drawing Rey's attention and her gaze came up to meet Ren's. 

For a moment she hesitated, because there was something almost satisfying about that pain. He'd caused her enough of it, and to know that she'd managed to return some of it gave her a heady sense of power. But almost as quickly she deflated. That wasn't something to be proud of and while Ren probably deserved any pain that she could administer to him, she wasn't certain what it said about her that she was currently feeling delighted in that pain. That in and of itself felt wrong - for her. She was willing to call him out on things that were his fault, and there were plenty of those. Right now he looked like an animal backed into a corner, and like he might lash out at anyone. 

"I know that," she said tersely, standing still in the room for a moment as she tried to figure out where to go next. "Look, that not being your fault doesn't change everything that's happened since then. It doesn't give me my childhood back, nor does it change where you've been. We need information on the First Order Ren, and if you refuse to give it to us, then we've got to wonder about where your loyalties actually are. That's reasonable, logical, and you'd do the same thing, only probably you'd be trying to drag it from our heads. But I'm not going to do that to you." 

Ren's jaw tightened and he literally took a step back away from her. 

"If you don't give us something then we're going to leave you here and let Tenel Ka feed you to the rancors." 

"That's ridiculous. You need me," there was a plaintive note to his voice. 

"No, we don't," Rey threw back to him. "Especially if we don't know where your loyalties are. That means you could be a menace to what we're trying to accomplish, so think about that why don't you?" 

She turned on her heel and headed from the room. She knew she really shouldn't let him alone, especially after the conversation they'd just had. There was nothing to say that he might not simply run off with one of the ships. He could probably do it, but that worry was alleviated as she stepped outside of the room to find Anakin and Zayna waiting in the hallway right outside of the room. 

"Rey-?" Anakin started.

She waved a hand back to the door. "Baby Darth is all yours." 

Let Anakin deal with him. He seemed to have far more patience than she did. She wasn't certain whether it was foolhardiness, or some brand of wisdom in the Force that she couldn't quite find herself. The only thing that made her keep from complete self-doubt was the fact that she very much got the feeling from Luke that he was far more cautious than Anakin. Perhaps Anakin was the only one hanging on all in. 

Maybe he felt like he had less to lose?

"So that seemed to go well." 

Rey turned her head back realizing that Zayna seemed to have followed her as Anakin had gone in to talk to Ren. She shrugged briefly and then realized she probably shouldn't take her frustration out on Zayna. While she didn't know the other girl well, she knew her well enough to know that she was devoted to the Resistance, and she'd been chosen by Poe to accompany him here. Or she'd volunteered, either way - there was a certain amount of trust that was granted simply by her being here. 

"I understand Poe all too well," Rey admitted with a sigh as they reached one of the many open seating areas throughout the palace. She stopped and turned around to look at Zayna. "I wish he were elsewhere, and I'm afraid that it's going to be a problem."

Zayna dropped herself into one of the oversize lounge chairs in the area and brought her gaze back to Rey. For a moment she seemed to be determining whether or not to ask the question but she must have decided to move forward with it. "Why haven't you taken him back to the Resistance already?" 

Rey didn't move other than to press her lips together tightly.

"We may need him to deal with Snoke," she said quietly. She didn't love the notion of admitting that what she'd said to Ren wasn't true. But it wasn't. While she wasn't all certain he was needed, she couldn't be sure he wasn't either. But of course that wasn't the whole of it. 

It was a fair question, but it got into territory she wasn't certain about. She suspected Poe might know the truth of Ren's identity but it was not particularly well spread throughout the Resistance. Kylo Ren and Ben Solo were different people so far as the galaxy at large was concerned and Rey didn't know if it were up to her to tell them they were one and the same. She also didn't know Zayna well enough to know if this was a secret she could keep. On the other hand, Rey knew that Zayna had given them the information about the temple on Vjun, and ultimately that had led her and Anakin into somewhere that she wouldn't have experienced otherwise, or known what it was… 

"Also, he's my brother." 

Zayna sat up and looked at her more intently. "Your brother?" 

"Yeah, and I remember him a lot differently when he was younger. I suppose there's a part of me that believes there's the possibility that if he does help us with Snoke, maybe there's hope for him to return to who he was once." 

"Okay." 

The word might have been skeptical, but it didn't seem like she was about ready to go spread that around the galaxy. She did seem curious. "So he's Anakin's brother too?" 

"Yeah, I mean, as those things work," Rey shrugged. 

Zayna was nodding and glancing back down the hallway in the direction they'd come. She seemed to be considering pieces of information but whatever it was she didn't share them. 

"That might explain Anakin's persistence in believing in him then," Zayna responded after a brief silence. 

"Probably. I think he does more than I do." 

"You've been hurt by him more," Zayna turned her attention back to the present. "I mean, and Poe, I get the impression that he was too. Does he know?" 

"I don't know," Rey shrugged. "He and the General are pretty close, so he might, but he might not. I think mostly people don't." 

"So I shouldn't say anything?"

Rey shrugged. "I wouldn't have said anything if I didn't think you could be discreet. I can't tell you what to do though. We picked him up on Vjun at our grandfather's castle. He claims to have spoken to his ghost there, and to have learned things, and to now want to take Snoke down. If he's true about wanting that, then there's the possibility that he really could help us with something there. But I'm not certain what his loyalties to the First Order really are. I don't think anyone is." 

"It's a risky game." 

"It is. But I think he's right about Snoke." 

"If you take out Snoke, you'll damage the First Order?" 

"Yeah. I don't know how much, but he believes it'll be significantly." 

"I'm not going to say anything," Zayna said suddenly. "I don't really want to lie to anyone, but I didn't think Anakin could do half the things that he ended up doing when we were on the mission together. If I see the need, then I'll talk, but, I'm a slicer, and I get that sometimes holding information close is a lot more useful than dropping it. I don't trust him." 

"Neither do I," Rey sighed. 

"But I do trust you and Anakin." 

"Thanks. I just hope we're not making a mistake." 

Zayna nodded: "Only way out is through."

Maybe that wasn't the most encouraging of realities, but Rey had this suspicion that Zayna was absolutely correct. She could search around and try to figure out whether or not Ren was going to be trustworthy or not only to find herself in a sand pit when it all fell through. The future would tell. She just had to be cautious with that telling. 

That didn't mean that she wasn't going to meditate on it, and she went back to her room with specifically that intention, losing herself in the attempt to try to figure out where they were going next. 

Rey couldn't help but feel that there was something really impractical about meditation. Luke had given her to meditation, seeking the Force and understanding where it intersected with light and dark and the balance of everything, and so she'd done as he requested, but right now the weight that stayed in her mind was that things were happening, and they needed to move forward. They couldn't remain hidden away forever and while the Hapan retreat was beautiful, it was also hiding and Rey knew it. 

"You didn't come for lunch." 

Rey was pulled out of said meditation by Finn's voice, and she turned her attention to the man who had just walked into the room. She offered him a smile and pushed herself from her seated position to a standing one.

"Sorry, I've been trying to figure out the right thing to do next."

"Yeah, I hear ya," Finn sighed as he stepped into the room and he came over to stand next to her. "Any answers?" 

"Not particularly, except that perhaps just continuing to not do anything isn't the best decision. I know we can't just rush in but -"

"I feel bad that we're making Poe wait on us," Finn offered as she trailed off. 

Rey nodded, relieved that she wasn't the only one who was feeling this because she'd been sensing it acutely as she'd been trying to make sense of things in the room. "Poe, Mom, the whole Resistance. They came to ask us for help and we're wavering." 

"Yeah," Finn nodded. "I mean, I get it, we don't want to rush in, and we don't want to make the wrong decision, and there's a lot of unknowns, but I think in the overall scheme of everything, we need to make some calls and move forward."

"I think if I've come to an answer in the last few hours, it's been something like that," Rey gave Finn a quick grin, but it faded almost as quickly as the other piece of what she'd been wondering about pushed itself back up to prominence in her thought process again. "There's also the fact that Mom doesn't know about Ren. I keep thinking maybe we should send back information to her." Rey didn't bring up the fact that she'd outed Ren to Zayna. But Zayna could take the information back, she supposed. If she was asked to do so, Rey suspected that she would. 

Finn reached forward to take Rey's hand. "You know, I don't know what to tell you there. I'm not certain if it helps things or not, but if you think it'd help things, I'll tell her." 

Rey blinked and frowned, her hand tightening automatically against Finn's. "What do you mean you'll tell her?"

"I mean, I've made a decision, and I'm going to tell Poe. What Zayna said out there? It makes a lot of sense. And I've got a feeling, it may not be a right one, but I guess as a Jedi I should trust those instincts, and those instincts say that it's you, and Ren, and Anakin that have to go after Snoke. That it's a sibling thing, and as much as I want to be there, right there with you, and would be under other circumstances, with Poe showing up here…" Finn frowned. "I'm feeling pulled that direction. Someone needs to go and give the Resistance the sort of emotional boost that Poe was talking about. And of all of us, I'm maybe the one that could go and do something there."

Rey hadn't been expecting that at all. "But, we might need you," she started and then almost as quickly she quieted. She had given Finn a hard time once about running away, but this didn't have the same feel to it. He wasn't running away, he was running towards something. "I could go with you," she said, sliding her fingers so that they were against his palm.

"No, you can't," Finn shook his head. "Look, I hate the part where we'll be separating, cause we did that cause we had to cause I was all bacta tank guy, but I just have a feeling about this Rey. This is where you belong, and that's where I do. I can do some good in the Resistance, but I'm not sure I'm trained enough to take on Snoke. And beyond that," his nose wrinkled up. "I'm not certain I'm supposed to be. I just have a feeling about this. Think about it and tell me honest you feel differently?" 

"I don't -" Rey stopped her protest almost immediately. She'd just told herself he was running towards something - in this case the Resistance - and there was this nagging feeling that if she dropped everything to go with him, that she'd be running away. She might not want to deal with whatever Ren was or wasn't. But she'd told Zayna earlier that she thought he had the possibility of doing something good there. "I don't like it," she settled on.

Finn grinned, and his other hand found hers. "Yeah, I can't say I do either. But I've got quite a bit of knowledge about the First Order, which could help them. And I've got a lightsaber now, even if it isn't one I built myself." 

"Neither is mine," Rey shrugged, and she couldn't help a smile.

"Yeah, so, you know you work with what you've got. And between you and Anakin and the time I've had with Luke, I may not be ready for some sort of ceremony, but I've got knowledge enough of the Force to pull on it." 

I guess that's clear from this whole conversation," Rey marveled slightly. She'd spent all morning trying to come to some conclusion or another and here Finn was here with determination and a sense of purpose that he was wearing like a cloak. He was wrapped in it, and she couldn't feel that he was wrong. 

"I'll go back with Poe and Zayna tomorrow then," Finn said, turning serious as the statement fell between them. 

They'd be separated again and Rey didn't like that. Not when she'd just begun to really enjoy the fact that Finn was there to reach for. She liked him supporting her, and being there, and she could turn to him as someone outside of her crazy family - something that felt almost essential as she moved forward. If it was just her, Anakin, and Ren, how was she supposed to come to any sort of clear conclusion? 

She stepped forward, leaning her head in to catch his lips in a kiss. As if he'd known that she was going to do that, and almost as if he was aware of all of the doubts she was feeling, he stepped in himself, his arm wrapping around waist and pulling her nearer. There was strength and support and belief in the embrace, and it was difficult to not feel every ounce of that as the flutter in her stomach when his arm slid around her body. 

Rey slid her hands up to wrap around his neck, taking that proximity as an invitation to explore even further with her kiss. They had kissed before, even spent time with exploring kisses, but this kiss sent tingles through her. Perhaps it was knowing that they were going to go separate directions and both into risky situations that made it feel more intense than it had felt when they'd been swimming in the pool. 

"Finn," she murmured as she pulled back from his face for just a moment, but really only to adjust her position so that she could press up into him again. She couldn't be close enough, and he could be way too far away. He would be, the thought brought a hot whimper of longing and need shooting up from her throat. 

Finn responded with a deep moan of his own. "Don't wanna leave you, Rey," he pulled back long enough to draw kisses up her jawline, to leave these words at the base of her ear, punctuating it with a long kiss at the base of her ear. 

She could have asked him not to, and perhaps in that moment he would have listened, but there was something about the determination with which he'd shared what he was going to do that was attractive in and of itself. She liked this Finn, the Finn that knew what he needed to do, that was open to the Force, and to duty, and who understood that sometimes that meant running towards things he might prefer to keep away from. So instead of asking, she just kissed him again, her tongue pressing against his lips until they parted and gave her entrance his tongue joining hers in a dance that wasn't choreographed, but was more desirable than one that was. 

His arms shifted, and he reached down to pull her up, and she took the urging, knowing almost intuitively to bounce off the balls of her feet, helping him out, so that his arms were the seat she was sitting on, her thighs circling his hips, her arms around his neck, and her kisses not letting up. 

It was swiftly moving from just kissing into some other territory. Some territory that maybe should have been intimidating, but instead it felt like the natural current leading her towards a place she really wanted to go. 

She pulled back from the kisses, but left her arms still wrapped around his neck, letting herself use the fact that she was eye to eye with him to gaze into his eyes. Her heart was pounding and surely he had to feel that. She could almost feel his, or maybe she could. If she reached into the Force there felt like a veritable symphony waiting to be conducted. 

"Finn," she breathed. 

"I want you," he offered back, his eyes holding onto hers as his words made her heart skip a beat. Her fingers found the edge of his hair, running along the line where skin and curls met. 

Rey responded with a kiss, reaching out towards the man who had turned into one of the first people in her memory that she'd ever been able to count on. She had thought he would be like everyone else who left, and then he'd come after her. And he'd volunteered to step up with her, for this, and now he was stepping up to be somewhere she didn't think she could be or should be. He was solid beneath her touch, a place she could build something solid. It was something that would withstand windstorms and rain. 

"I'm going to come back to you," she promised, pressing the words along his jawline in a row of light kisses. "When all this is over, I'll come back, and we'll figure out this Jedi stuff together."

His hand snuck up her back, warm against her lower back, and she tried to gain enough leverage against him to somehow press closer, even if there logically wasn't much way they could get that much closer. 

"Finn, stay with me tonight," she murmured feeling both audacious and certain of what she was saying. 

On Jakku she'd never given much thought to family outside of those that had left her. Starting her own had seemed so outside the realm of likelihood that she'd stayed far away from it, learning to defend herself from those that might force it on her, and from the possibility of bringing a child into a world so bleak and unforgiving. Perhaps too her own lack of a family had left her with the knowledge that something like that could be fraught with uncertainty in a larger sense - not just on Jakku - but galactically. 

That hadn't changed, exactly. All of her current struggles seemed wrapped up in having now gained a family, and having had that family not be what she had built it up to be in her head. And yet…

Finn pulled on the possibility of something like she'd dreamed of. With Finn she found herself believing that such stability could exist, and that she could be wanted, and that she could share that with others. That hope blossomed up despite the fact that they might be separated and despite the fact that war was uncertain. 

"You sure?" He pulled back, to look into her eyes, and the hope and warmth found there caused her heart to flip once more. 

"I'm so sure," she breathed back, bringing her hands up to cup his face. "I'm completely sure. Stay with me." 

He kissed her again. This kiss felt different to her, like a claim of some sort, a promise of intention perhaps. 

He let her down, and her feet touched the tiles on the floor, and as soon as she had that platform underneath her she could use it to suggest an action, and she reached out for the collar of his jacket and tugged, and he followed. 

Her bed wasn't so far away, and by the time her knees were backed up against the edge of it, she'd peeled his jacket off completely, instead moving her hand to the shirt underneath. 

"You're so beautiful Rey," Finn was openly gazing at her now as she'd never been looked at before. Like he knew it was an invitation that she'd made, that could be withdrawn, and that he'd respect it if it were. 

She swallowed and sat down on the edge of the bed. The pause had welcomed the magnanimity of what they were about to do into the room and for a moment her breath seemed to catch around the heart beat that felt as if it were in her throat. She couldn't have imagined this moment a year ago, but right now she couldn't imagine doing anything else. She reached up to touch his cheek. 

"Come here," she murmured, a quiet welcome to join her. She had no doubt about what she wanted, but she also didn't feel any rush about it. Finn wasn't leaving until tomorrow. He didn't even need to talk to Poe or Zayna about it until then. They had hours, and there wasn't even any real reason to leave her room except maybe food, and Rey didn't think she needed any despite having missed it earlier. 

He sat down on the bed beside her, then stretched out, propping himself up on one elbow. "Here?" Finn grinned, a tease. 

She laughed and bumped his upper arm gently. "Yeah, here. If I only get you tonight until Force knows how long, then I want you _right_ here." 

He nodded, reaching his hand over to lace his fingers through hers once more. "Yeah, alright. I guess that's a reasonable request." 

"You guess," she raised an eyebrow at him. 

He grinned. 

She leaned forward and kissed him, and he took the opportunity to move closer, and for the next few moments she was aware only of his arms around her, his fingers on her shoulders and neck, and his lips against hers. Rey gave herself over to that sense of the present like she might a meditation. In some ways she couldn't help but think that it wasn't unlike meditation only instead of her breathing, and the awareness of the Force around her, it was Finn and his heartbeat, his breathing, and the feel of him all around her. And like meditation and the Force it seemed to lift her up in spirit, so that it felt not unlike it had that first time she'd lifted the _Falcon_ up into the air and known that she could fly it. 

"Is there some sort of Jedi code against this?" Finn pulled back, he was looking at her suddenly, a serious query in his dark eyes. 

"I don't… know." Rey pulled back, suddenly aware of gravity again. "Uncle Luke isn't married, but I've gotten the impression from Anakin that some of the Jedi Masters he knows are. I don't know why it would be… Love feels like the ultimate expression of the light -- to me." 

"I guess it was something Mara said to be the other day. But I don't know what made me take it that way," he left his fingers entwined in hers, his hand resting gently on her hip where the curve just started down into her waist. 

"What did she say?" Rey asked, suddenly curious even if she wasn't one hundred percent certain she liked the pull-back or the new way the conversation was going. The kissing had been nice, and she'd been fine not worrying about whether kissing Finn was going to make her a terrible Jedi or not. 

"It just made me think that she and Luke had been close once, maybe _really_ close and that something had happened - something that had to do with him being a Jedi and maybe also with her not being one." 

"But that doesn't necessarily mean that this isn't something Jedi do," Rey pointed out. "Uncle Luke's just the only Jedi here. Lots of people don't get married or stay in relationships long term, and they haven't built a lightsaber. Besides, my mother's married -"

"But she's not a Jedi," Finn said. "She's a general."

"She could have been." 

"Yeah, but she isn't and hasn't done the training." 

Rey tightened her fingers over his for a moment. The question had introduced an element of uncertainty into the moment. But as she turned it over in her mind, the uncertainty seemed less about Finn and wanting to be with him, and more about whether or not she could be considered a Jedi if she was with Finn and whether or not he could be considered one. 

"There's so much that I don't know," she admitted to Finn. He moved his thumb over her knuckles and she looked down at their hands pulled together. "You know the first time I met you, you grabbed my hand."

"Yeah, you told me that you could run without me holding it, if I recall correctly."

"Something like that," her lips turned up in a smile. "But I had a point for bringing it up." 

Finn raised an eyebrow at her, and he grinned, turning onto his die, propping his head up with his hand and watching her. "All right, do explain."

Rey sat up, the pieces of what she wanted to say were all there, it was just a matter of putting them into some semblance of order. She hesitated, Finn was watching her so carefully that it was almost distracting and she wanted to lean forward and kiss him again, distracting them both from the weight of this conversation. But she knew that they needed to have it, to have a conscious decision made to move forward. That if her Uncle came back with something, she needed to have an answer for him. And maybe she could talk to Anakin, to see if she was so completely off base but she didn't think that she was. Regardless.

"You reached for my hand, and I said, that I didn't need you to hold my hand. And that's still true." She glanced down at their hands. "I don't _need_ you to hold my hand. But that doesn't mean that I don't _want_ you too. But I think - and this is where I think it's important as a Jedi thing - that you holding my hand is a strength, not a weakness. Look at Ren-" 

Finn rolled his eyes at this. "Rey, I don't think -"

"No, wait, there's a point. Ren won't let anyone close to him right now. And look where it's gotten him. My Uncle doesn't seem to let anyone close to him right now, and I don't think it's been good for him either. I think we have to have people in our lives, not necessarily because we can't run if they aren't there to hold our hands, but because we want them to be there with us through the running." 

She stopped, took a moment to try to decide if she'd managed to explain that well and then nodded her head. "If that makes sense." 

"Yeah, I think it does," Finn ran his thumbs over her knuckles again. "I know you don't need me to help you run. But I also don't want you to have to run from shit alone." He frowned. "You don't think I'm running away do you?" 

"Going with the Resistance?" Rey's eyes widened and she shook her head. "No, absolutely not. You know that I can do this, and that you're needed elsewhere. I think that's actually why I'm not worried about what the Jedi think of relationships." She answered Finn's questioning look with a smile and an explanation: "We both are listening to the Force, even though it might not be putting us in the same space." 

"That makes sense," Finn nodded slowly. 

She smiled and leaned down, kissing him once again. "We're in the same space right now though." 

"Yeah," Finn murmured around the kiss. "You still want me to stay?"

"I definitely want you to stay." Rey grinned through her kiss. 

"Are you asking me to hold your hand?" he chuckled. 

Rey took the opportunity to move forward, pushing him back on the bed, one knee on either side of him as she straddled him. She leaned down to kiss him, her hands finding his and holding them back against the mattress. Pulling back from the kiss she whipsered: "Will you hold my hand, Finn?"


	6. Ren

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in one month, what is this craziness? 
> 
> We may slow down a bit after the new year, sadly, but I'm going to keep working on this and hopefully we'll get it finished before summer!

Ren sat cross legged on the floor. His back was stiff, but he found himself leaning into the pain from it. Once upon a time, when he'd been a much smaller person, this had not hurt so much. Of course he didn't know when the last time he'd done this for hours at a time was. Probably one of the times he'd been in solitary confinement on one of Snoke's whims. At this point he couldn't help but think of those whims as being petulant ways to control him, but even with that understanding, he also felt guilt for dismissing them in this way. He'd taken on Snoke's guidance willingly after all. 

He glanced across at his brother and sister. They were all sitting on the floor of Anakin and Ren's room in the Hapan Palace. In front of them were datapads and old fashioned paper that had been scribbled with notes from Anakin, and they had been here for nearly an hour. 

The datapads and the notes all had to do with Vjun. Many of those notes were things Anakin had tried to dig out. He had spent most of his afternoon with Zayna reviewing the different things he'd found in the palace and doing some further digging into the galactic holonet. Those things had been written down, and he'd been doing mental mapping to try to connect them together, since just after dinner. Ren had been trying to avoid his mutterings, until Anakin had pulled him in, and eventually Anakin had gone after Rey. 

Rey had not been at dinner, but she had appeared with Anakin. Her hair was down around her shoulders, dressed simply in a pair of capris and with the wrap that she'd been wearing when he'd first met her as the scavenger from Jakku. Ren felt that something had shifted, but he couldn't put a finger on what it was, and whatever it was, it didn't seem to directly relate to the mission in front of them. Although, and this did seem to be saying something, she felt as if she'd been less terse with him. Ren wasn't going to put too much stock on it - there was very little in his mind that gave room to the idea that she might ever treat him as if he were her older brother. 

"Go through it again," Anakin looked up from his datapad. 

"Go through what again?" Ren looked over at his younger brother. He had to remind himself that it wasn't Han that was making the request, and anyway, he had to keep them both with him to take down Snoke, even if he was ready to just go. 

"What you know about Snoke." 

"I've told you everything I know to tell you," Ren snapped irritably. 

"Well, obviously not the right thing," Rey pointed out mildly. "Anakin, maybe we should be going back to bed. It's after midnight."

"We need _something_ to go on," Anakin turned to her. "We've got nothing more than we did have. We're going to leave Hapes. If we don't have something, we'll be going in blind without any plan, and I don't know about you, but that's not something I fancy doing." 

"I'm just going to be repeating myself for the fourth time," Ren glared, and he pushed himself to his feet which left him towering over the other two as he paced the room. "Or sixth, or tenth, or however many times you've asked me the same question." 

"We've got to be missing something," Anakin sighed and placed his fingers to his forehead to massage it.. 

"Maybe not," Rey suggested, but she didn't seem certain. "There might not be any link between Vjun and Snoke."

"But we both had visions of -"

"Yeah, you did," Rey nodded. "But maybe the link wasn't Snoke. Maybe it was grandfather, and it was pulling the three of us together: Ren, you, and me. If we hadn't all been on Vjun at the same time, that wouldn't have happened." 

"You're saying all we need is the siblings Solo to take out the Supreme Leader?" Ren turned around, his words dripping sarcasm. It was this sort of kum bah yah nonsense that made him want to smack these two. They weren't going to love this one to victory. The idea that they could just think Light Side really hard and solve the galaxy's problems seemed to be an underlying belief of both Anakin and Rey. For all Ren had avoided his Uncle, he couldn't help but feel that Luke might have gotten out of that particular line of thought. Well, good for him. It was nonsense. 

"Maybe we don't go after Snoke right now," Rey suggested, ignoring Ren. "Maybe we go back with Poe and help the Resistance while we continue to work on this problem." 

"Does that really seem right to you?" Anakin had taken to ignoring Ren as well apparently. Ren sighed, and stalked across the room to stare out the window at the moon - fully visible high in the sky at this hour - but his mind stayed with his siblings despite himself. Anakin had continued. 

"Snoke is behind everything the First Order is doing. We could take out the highest general the First Order had to offer, but we'll still have Snoke to deal with."

"But what can one man do? If we were with the Resistance - if we were able to actually lead them forward and destroy the largest portion of the First Order… wouldn't that be something?" 

"Earlier you said we should go after Snoke."

"That was before we didn't have a single plan or piece of information that felt like something that would bring Snoke down," Rey shrugged. "Just rushing in doesn't feel like a plan, it feels like suicide."

"All this talk is distraction from the real issue," Ren stated flatly without turning around. "Anakin's right about Snoke." 

"Well then what are you not telling us?" Rey snapped at him. "If you've got a plan why don't you share it with us so we can move forward, go take him out, and return to finish off the First Order. Unless you're planning on returning to the First Order after we deal with Snoke, which you probably are." 

Ren turned around and glared, a look that was tightened as Hux's eyes flickered through his memory. Would Hux even take him back? Hux always complained when Ren came to see him, but he always had taken him into his bed. Would this be different? Would Ren have finally have committed the unpardonable sin? Then again, Hux chafed under Snoke's direction sometimes. He put no real stock in the Force - that was his sin - but he'd listen to Ren, so if Snoke were gone, Hux would have leadership, Ren would be there to direct him in the Force. It wasn't a terrible plan to return to the First Order, and Hux would see to reason, probably.

Something flickered in Rey and Ren glanced up at her again, eyes narrowing in on her: "You want to go with the Resistance." 

"That's not what I said." 

"It's the Traitor isn't it?" 

"Shut up, Ren. You don't know anything about Finn. I just think we need to be doing something and I'm not convinced we have a plan. The Resistance clearly does." 

Ren stared at her and her cheeks flushed. 

"We need to be focused on plans," she reiterated.

"I'm focused," Ren smirked. "Are you?" 

"Enough," Anakin stood up, along with one of the datapads. "Here's what I don't understand. If Vjun wasn't important, why did I stumble across those Temple Guards or whatever? They gave me all this information about what happened at the temple, and the Jedi Master that left and why would -"

"What Jedi Master?" Ren interrupted, his focus shifting away from his sister and towards his brother. "You didn't mention that before." 

"Didn't I? Anakin frowned.

"If you did, I didn't catch it," Ren waved away the particulars, for once not really caring to get into an argument over whether or not Anakin had said something and he missed it, or if Anakin simply hadn't said it. He was tired enough of having not moved forward that it didn't suit to waste time on petty accusations. 

"Okay, so there was a Jedi Master on Vjun - the sort of temple master I suppose you could say. I was told by the guards in the Temple - which I think was some sort of Force vision really - that the Master left the Order, and the temple." Anakin reached for one of the notes of paper and he began to scan it. "Okay, so Master Enoban L'hnnar. He was a diplomat and he was an instructor, according to the guards. But something went wrong and he killed eight knights before he left. That's why the Temple felt so dark." 

"Because of the death?" 

Anakin looked over at Ren. "Yeah, death that isn't natural tends to create that sense of darkness in my experience. But I swear I told you that. The Guardians said that he'd figured out a way to extend life, but that - he needed to create a 'prison for his power'."

"A prison for his power?" Rey was looking confused. 

"I told you about this after." 

"Yeah, but I don't think you mentioned that part specifically."

"This was in Vader's holocron." Ren spoke more loudly than was typical for him. His words seemed to echo in the room as both Rey and Anakin turned to look at him.

There was a building sense of importance that he could feel in the Force. He'd been ready to dismiss Vjun as having no importance to Snoke, but suddenly that didn't feel accurate at all. Snoke had allowed him to look at Vader's holocron, but had he known what was in it? And when he'd asked to learn more about Vader at Vjun, it had been denied. 

Anakin was staring at him, and Ren felt like there was some envy in the gaze, but maybe he was making it up, and while there was a surge of pride in knowing that his Grandfather had chosen to spoke to him, it was tempered by the reality that he hadn't always recognized what wasn't his grandfather. 

"I spent time with the holocron, and there were a lot of things on there - things I learned about the Sith and the Dark side, but there was also a story of a Jedi Master in a temple, and I didn't connect it with Vjun before, but that story now -" Ren paced the room, watching the scuffed toes of his boots. "He was a Jedi Master, but he left the known galaxy for the unknown regions. It was someone that Vader had been sent after by Palpatine," Ren explained. "Someone that he was supposed to find. It had literally happened centuries before, but Vader, and Palpatine believed that he had information about the Force and how to extend life with it."

Rey's eyes widened. "It has to be the same Jedi Master." 

"It doesn't seem likely that there would be that many in the galaxy," Ren turned his attention to her for a minute. "Palpatine believed the Master was alive in the Unknown Regions and Vader was assigned the task."

"Did he ever find him?" Anakin asked. "Did he say in the holocron?"

"No. Presumably the Rebellion heated up and Vader was needed elsewhere. At least that was what I took away from what was said."

"But Palpatine had wanted to find him," Rey pointed out.

Both brothers turned to look at her. She got to her feet and she was stepping forward, and there under the surface of everything was that reminder of feeling as if she was his sister again. The Breha he remembered, and for an instant he wanted to reach out and grab her hand, but he clamped down on the urge. 

"There's nothing to say that he ever did." 

"What if the Master was Snoke?" 

Rey's words fell heavily in the room and for a moment Ren didn't move. It seemed an insane notion. While Snoke was very likely ancient, they were talking about something that had happened before the Empire, before the First Order. "That's not possible." 

"Maybe let's not say impossible," Anakin stepped forward. "I'm not convinced, but let's not throw it out without looking through it. What wouldn't make sense in that idea?" 

"The timeline, for one," Ren pointed out. "We're talking about a Jedi Master that was living centuries before Vader." 

"A Jedi Master that supposedly learned secrets to extend life," Rey pointed out. "And is he human or another species? We can't just look at a human lifespan here."

"He's humanoid," Ren said, his mind racing. "He hasn't mentioned anything specifically about that." But even as he said it, he frowned. 

Anakin was staring at him, and for the first time there were pieces of what Snoke had asked for that did make sense. 

_Maybe._

Rey and Anakin were both staring at him, and Ren swallowed, turning to fully face them, crossing his arms across his chest as if it might help him share things. 

"As long as I can remember there's been a voice in my head," his voice was low. Most of this wasn't any surprise to Anakin, he suspected. He'd said it before, after all, but it meant something different now from what it had before. "Even when I was a boy I would think things, or have thoughts that I knew wouldn't be approved of by Leia or Luke, but they were there nonetheless. I couldn't delete them or make them go away. And the voice was one of the few places that I didn't feel judged for having them."

"Mom never judged you," Rey frowned. "At least not in my memory." 

"Maybe not out loud, but if you knew what she would say about something and you thought something else, you don't have to be shamed by someone else, you can do the shaming yourself," Anakin as staring intently at Ren. 

Ren brought his gaze up to match his younger brother's. "Yeah, something like that," he muttered. 

It wasn't an inaccurate representation. Sometimes it had been more obvious than that. He'd said something only to feel like Han or Leia jumped down his throat at the idea. It hadn't made any sense to him at the time, and he'd learned to simply not say certain things even if they were still there and he would still think them. In retrospect, knowing who his grandfather was, and what Leia's worst fear had likely been, that made a lot more sense. He wondered if he would have taken the statements differently if he'd realized that probably it wasn't about him - at least not exactly. 

"There was a shadow that would always be there. It'd be in my dreams sometimes and I'd have terrible nightmares."

"I do remember those," Rey frowned. "I didn't have them."

Ren remembered that too. In some ways he'd envied his sister's lack of nightmares. Particularly as he'd gotten older and realized that they just weren't going to go away.

"The shadow would whisper things that I agreed with, and I was afraid of it, but I think I was drawn to it too. I needed to know what it was." 

"He was always there." 

Ren looked up again at Anakin and nodded. "When I found out about Vader, about grandfather's identity. I thought it was him." 

"It was the Dark Side though, or Snoke? it wasn't Vader. You just told us that Vader said it wasn't him." Rey was frowning. 

"Will you just let me finish?" Ren snapped. "Yeah, it wasn't Vader, but I thought that it was. You have to understand, this shadow had been with me for as long as I have any memory. Probably from before. I didn't have any context for any of it, except to know that it whispered things to me that my parents didn't approve of. Later when I realized who Vader was, and I realized that Leia and Luke had both chosen to lie to me about him - it made sense that those thoughts would have been him."

"And that your grandfather was the only one who understood you truly," Anakin's words were more sympathetic than anything else. "Of course you listened to him." 

"Did you -" Ren started to ask, but then he wasn't certain what he was going to ask. Had Anakin ever been in the same place? 

"I had dark dreams," Anakin watched him as if he understood what Ren was going to ask without him saying it. "Lots of them. I was touched by the dark side before I was even born, but I grew up knowing - different things from you. I had a context to put them in. I knew it wasn't my Grandfather - at least I was pretty certain of that, because I knew my Grandfather had turned back to the light in his death. And you didn't speak to Vader at Vjun. You spoke with Anakin Skywalker." Anakin glanced over at Rey. "That's a distinction, and while it may not feel necessary to make it, I think it is. Some of their desires for the galaxy might have been similar in some ways, but methods matter."

Ren was quiet a moment and then he finally nodded. "When I met Snoke, I assumed Vader had led me to him. That this was who could teach me because there was no way that Vader could do it on his own - he was dead. So I listened to Snoke, even if, or when, I hated it. He could help me become who Grandfather had wanted me to be. Grandfather had understood me, he brought me here. And Snoke had me help him from the very beginning so I felt useful. And that help was…" Ren filtered back to those early days. There had been times he'd been furious and times that he'd been afraid, but he'd believed that his Grandfather wanted him to learn from Snoke, that he was there to learn something and become someone who could do what Vader had promised to finish but been unable to. "He had me doing what almost felt like healing spells." 

"Healing spells?" 

"I was good at it before," Ren shrugged. "It wasn't like - anything I'd specifically been taught to do in the Force, but that's the easiest way to describe it." 

"You were healing Snoke?" Anakin frowned. "In what way?" 

Healing was the only way Ren could think to describe what he'd been asked to do. Luke had taught him a few things, and some things had come naturally. If Ren had ever been naturally good at anything in the Force it had been mental capabilities and manipulations: the ability to reach in and heal things. The longer he was with Snoke the more he'd learned to draw on the Dark Side, on anger and frustration, to provide him with more power in terms of telekinesis, and ultimately, the healing things he was asked to do. The healing had gotten harder to control the longer he'd been with Snoke. 

He realized that they were both still looking at him and he tried to sort through an explanation even if it wasn't like anything he'd really learned with Luke. "It was - almost as if there were empty spaces in the Force. I was able to reach out and pull them together, thread them back together with the Force, and living energy, and when I did it successfully Snoke would be stronger and more consistent. Less unpredictable. It never lasted though." 

"Empty spaces in the Force? Is that possible?" Rey looked bewildered. "Isn't the Force everywhere?"

"I would have said that," Anakin said. "But with the Yuuzhan Vong, I've learned otherwise. Yeah, there are places where the Force can bubble and not exist." 

"You think Snoke is Yuuzhan Vong?" Rey raised an eyebrow.

"Not based on what you've told me of the Yuuzhan Vong," Ren shook his head. "Snoke is humanoid. Maybe not human, but humanoid." 

"The Yuuzhan Vong have tattoos and their warrior caste purposefully change and disfigure their bodies," Anakin glanced back to Ren.

Ren shook his head again. "No that's not Snoke. But it was as if he contained empty spaces in the Force, like a blanket with holes that had to be stitched back together and the stitching would break and have to be redone again." 

Silence descended upon the room after he said that and they each seemed to be waiting for another to speak. It was Anakin who finally broke the silence. 

"So, is the Master from Vjun, Snoke?" 

Ren had said that was impossible, and it still didn't seem likely to him. After all, nothing he'd just shared really pointed to anything in what they'd learned of the Master that Darth Vader and Palpatine had been searching for. 

"If he isn't, did Palpatine and Vader find that Master?" Rey queried.

"If he is, did they find him?" Anakin countered. 

But even as his siblings begin on that line of thinking, Ren was headed out on another one. Because maybe it wasn't really important if there was a connection. Or maybe it was, but he was suddenly thinking about the healing that he'd done. So far as he knew no one else could do that for Snoke. It had never been something that he'd completely ceased doing. It had been a part of his training consistently throughout the past few years. 

"What if those empty spaces are a weakness?" He voiced, interrupting Rey as she said something about Palpatine's reach. 

Anakin and Rey both turned to him. "What?" 

"Snoke has a different feel in the Force from anyone I've ever known. He was willing to train me so I didn't stop to think about that, but he was different. Those empty spaces were different. And over the past few years, I've reached into those spaces so many different times. What if they could be exploited, to destroy him?" 

Anakin and Rey exchanged glances. 

"That's the closest we've had to a lead yet," Anakin said softly. 

They turned to sleep after that. Rey had seemingly been content to return to her room, and Ren had tried to ignore the probable reason behind that contentment, even if he wanted to follow her and demand from the Traitor exactly what he was doing with his sister. Rey wouldn't appreciate it, and he didn't particularly intend on repeating the lightsaber fight on Starkiller over what she was doing with the Traitor. It wasn't really any of his business anyway, any more than what he was doing with Hux was any of her business. 

Hux was on his mind as he stared into the night, the sounds and the feel of the life on Hapes easily accessible in the Force and through the windows. Ren was pretty certain that Anakin had fallen to sleep directly, but he laid awake, cursing his inability to relax his mind and fall into sleep. That this was the situation he found himself in only reminded him that his course of action would have been to go to Hux if he had been on the _Finalizer_. Whatever other sort of relationship they had, Hux rarely seemed bothered by being woken up in the middle of the night for a fuck. Correction, he frequently reported being bothered, but continued to enthusiastically engage in the physical activity and was content in the aftermath of such. 

Ren turned, the chronometer blaring a number far too late, or too early depending upon your point of view. Exhausted he pondered if meditation would get him any nearer sleep. But meditation was not Hux. He reached out in the Force to poke his brother's mind, and certain that Anakin was asleep, he rolled onto his back and reached for his dick. His hand was not Hux either, but you didn't always get what you wanted. 

Three hours of sleep was hardly enough to make him settled, refreshed, and content, but it was what he'd gotten in the end. The lack of rest did nothing to make the breakfast with everyone any less awkward and uncomfortable. Ren half pondered the idea of poking Poe in his brain, just to provoke a response. The man was so clearly on edge around him, when Ren had no intention of doing anything to him, that it was almost funny. But he talked himself out of it as he reminded himself that he did need Anakin and Rey to continue to trust him, and they wouldn't get the humor in the action. 

He sighed, pushed some sort of scrambled egg around his plate, and reached for his caf. 

"You have no idea where Hux is?" 

The cup of caf paused nearly to his lips as he turned his dark eyes to the object of his deferred prank. Poe was staring at him intently, and if Ren hadn't known better, he would have suspected that Poe knew something of the relationship that he and Hux had. He returned the look with a glare of his own. 

"The _Finalizer_ could have gone anywhere in the galaxy since I left it. If its last coordinates are so very helpful to you, then I suppose I could give you those, or maybe you already have them because Mara checked the flight logs in my shuttle," he turned his attention to the red haired former Imperial that was quietly drinking a cup of caf, and not eating much else.

"You're expecting me to believe you haven't been in contact with them at all, and you have no ability to rendezvous again?" 

Truthfully, Ren could have done a rendezvous if he needed to. He knew that, but Poe didn't need to know that. What Poe would also not know is that a rendezvous at this point would be of little use to Ren. With Snoke undefeated and still in charge, he would be considered as much a traitor as the former stormtrooper sitting a few chairs down from him, and he would be punished, even with the level of information he could bring back. It would not be enough to undo any punishment.

"I know you know something you aren't telling us," Poe leaned across the table. 

Something flared in Ren, and the deferred joke popped up again, but less as a joke and more as a desire to simply crush the pilots windpipe. He knew from his time with Poe from before how the man was close to Leia. That she occupied a place in his mind and heart that was much like he would give to a parent, and that she treated him much like she might treat a son. That alone was reason to drastically dislike him. But this persistent line of questioning - Ren slammed his caf down with enough vigor that it splashed over the side of the cup staining the ivory table cloth. He pushed to his feet and left the room without a word.

He suspected that someone would follow him. After all, he'd been allowed no alone time since he got here. They didn't trust him, and that was infuriating, even if some deep part of himself said it was perfectly reasonable and that he would not trust someone in a reverse situation. And that likely that person would not even have the freedom to walk around. They would be in a prison cell of some making or another, and if it were someone who was Force sensitive then it would be a cell of a different type of making. He expected Anakin, or Rey, or maybe even Luke, so he was surprised when it was Tenel Ka that he felt in the hall behind him. 

He didn't stop walking, didn't give her the satisfaction of turning him around. Instead he continued down the hall towards the room he was sharing with Anakin. She didn't stop, but continued the same number of paces behind him. When he reached the door to his room he opened it and turned to regard her sullenly. With a shrug, he stepped back into the room and left the door open, suspecting she would follow him and finding his suspicions were confirmed a few seconds later. 

In the room he headed for the large balcony outside of the chambers. Let her follow him, or not. It wasn't as if he were planning to make his way down the walls of the palace to the lake several stories down. 

"How long have you and Hux been together?" 

The question stopped him dead in his tracks in the center of the archway leading to the outside. His mind wanted to reject it, but there was no question regarding what had been asked. He turned on his heel, staring at her. "How did you know?" 

Tenel Ka stepped forward calmly, as if he weren't glaring blaster bolts in her direction. "I didn't," she replied. "But it makes sense. You've been protective of him, specifically, and of the First Order insofar as Hux seems to be mentioned, but not of the First Order of its own accord. I didn't know that you were with him, but it filled in a gap of why." 

"You must hate me now, knowing that I'd protect someone who is the enemy of the entire Republic," Ren spat, and turned his attention from her and continued the rest of the way out onto the balcony. 

Tenel Ka followed him, but didn't settle directly next to him, instead walking a few feet away and resting her elbows on the stone railing. 

Ren had expected some sort of push back against his statement, or even maybe a straight-out agreement of it just to needle him. But instead there was only silence, and while he tried to keep his view straight ahead he couldn't entirely ignore the woman next to him. They had been friends once, and perhaps it wasn't surprising that of all of them she'd figured it out first. But he also had expected her to care more. They'd been friends once, he'd even crushed on her once upon a time - or Ben Solo had. She'd been strong, controlled, and beautiful, and it had been attractive to Ben Solo, because of course that would have been. He could be none of those things himself, so of course he would have been attracted to it. It would also explain why Ren felt no attraction to her currently - he'd grown past that.

"Do you love him?" 

"What kind of question is that?" Ren turned, wondering at this being the first question Tenel Ka asked him. She was hardly a sentimentalist or a romantic, but she was just looking at him with eyes the color of a stormy sky reflected in a lake and seemingly nonplussed by this turn of questioning. She was so in control that it wasn't entirely comfortable. "It's not any of your business is what it is," he added.

"You care enough to protect him though, and I dare say that it is one of the best signs I've seen from you," she was still watching him and he could feel this. 

"What's that supposed to mean?" 

"It means Ben Solo is in there somewhere."

"That's ridiculous," Ren turned around now, and took a step towards her. "Ben Solo is gone. He was weak and ridiculous, and I'm not him." 

"Do you think so little of me, Ren?" 

His brows furrowed together as he stared at her, irritation raising. "What is that supposed to mean?" 

"It means that you just described one of my best friends when I was a girl as weak and ridiculous, and what does that say about me, who befriended him?" 

"Nothing. It says nothing about you," Ren groused. 

"It does, because if you think so little of Ben Solo, you must think equally poorly of me, the person who befriended him, who cared about him, who wanted good things for him. The person who saw that he was compassionate and thoughtful, and who wanted to be someone who could help people, and do something beautiful in the galaxy. That was the boy I knew and he was neither weak nor ridiculous." 

"Then why is he no longer here?" Ren turned around. "If he was so strong?" 

"I think he is." 

"I'm not him," Ren's anger percolated, and he slammed his hand down on the stone railing. 

"You're not _not_ him either," Tenel Ka persisted, and she stepped straight up to him, nearly a foot shorter, but equally determined and fierce. All of the strength and stubbornness he remembered from her, and he wondered idly if it came to a fight which of them would win it. "That boy is still here," she reached out and touched his chest gently even as he pushed away from her. "And you can change your name and run as far as you wish from him, but that doesn't change the fact that he's still here and ignoring him does nothing more than fracture you." 

"That's nonsense," Ren muttered. 

"I don't think so," Tenel Ka sighed. "Ben Solo wanted to protect people he cared about. His best and worst moments came when he was allowed to be that person, or not," she buried the stake deep and Ren winced. 

The thrill of having helped to save total strangers, strangled in the unending torture of knowing that he'd lost his younger sister forever were emotions Ren only wished he'd been able to kill as part of Ben Solo. He hadn't been able to though and whatever he had said to Han, to Tenel Ka, or to anyone else, those pieces of Ben Solo lived like tenacious weeds that couldn't be pulled, couldn't be killed, and couldn't be finished forever. 

"You're allowed to love General Hux, Ren," Tenel Ka persisted, although Ren had given her no reason to do so.

"I don't love him," Ren snapped irritably. 

And he didn't. Love had no place in the First Order, and Hux would have had no time for it. Hux had been, at best, like a bottle of wine, opened occasionally for momentary comfort. That was it. Hux would have scoffed at anything beyond that as Ren scoffed at it now. Ren knew that with as much certainty as he knew anything else, and perhaps with more certainty than he had with some things. 

Or did he? 

The memory of the final moments on the _Finalizer_ played back through his mind. He had gone to Hux's quarters last thing, to report to him that he was leaving, or so he'd said. It wasn't intended to be anything more, but then Hux had left him with a goodbye kiss, and the words 'in case you do something stupid and don't come back'. Had he _known_ somehow? Or guessed it? His jaw tightened as the memory was clear. 

He didn't love Hux. 

But Hux had been the closest to someone who understood, the closest to someone who knew the particular weights that Ren carried in the First Order, and what it was like to report to Snoke and the uncertainty and frustrations that entailed. Hux had been the only person in the past few years that Ren could dare to connect to at all, and even if it had been constantly negotiated and rarely allowed to be left unprotected, it had been… 

"If he knows you've defected from the First Order, whatever you did have with him is likely ended," Tenel Ka remarked quietly. "If it is not love, merely a union of convenience, then if he were to meet you, he would kill you if give the opportunity." 

Ren's jaw tightened and his cheek twitched slightly. 

"In the meantime, we are all looking for a reason to trust you. Even Poe Dameron, I would wager, because while he is unlikely to be overly fond of you for any number of reasons, you are still who you are, no matter what name you go under. Information about the First Order - about General Hux - about any of it would be particularly helpful as the Resistance prepares to go against them. If it is not love, Ren, and it is not loyalty, than what holds your tongue? That's the question I cannot answer, and no one else can either, and it's the question that makes us question whether or not you should be here." 

From anyone else the words would have been cause to fight, but from Tenel Ka they were factually stated without judgement or any deep emotion. 

He couldn't answer if it was loyalty, only that obviously it could not be love. He realized though, that if he were given the chance to return to Hux's side, he would do so - just not to Snoke's. And so long as Snoke and Hux were together, then he was placed into a mindset of choosing, and he would choose to end Snoke, even if it meant he could not be with Hux. But in the after, could he return to Hux with triumph? And together they would build their own galaxy? 

"Fine," he turned towards her. She was still watching him. "Are you done?" 

Tenel Ka had a Hapan face, which was greatly akin to a Sabaac face, and had she been anyone else, Ren might not have seen how his dismissal hurt. But it did and for an instant he regretted it. Or perhaps that fragment of Ben Solo did - because Ben Solo had wanted to see Tenel Ka smile. He'd been a foolish idiot about it. Perhaps she remembered that and thought that boy was this man, but he wasn't and he wouldn't return to such foolishness. He didn't say anything further, but simply tightened his gaze on her. 

"You have your nobles no doubt," he added, icily. "I have my General." 

Tenel Ka's gaze narrowed slightly, for the first time giving away the irritation she was feeling. There was both a relief and regret in seeing that. "You will have to make up your mind, Ren. That's always been true." She turned, giving him a tight look as she moved past him towards the door. 

Ren didn't watch her go, turning instead to the outside, the woods and the clouds. He wasn't sorry to see her go because the conversation had been uncomfortable and it was a chance- perhaps his first - to be alone in this place with his own thoughts. Yet, despite this he found himself not wanting to truly be alone, a thought that was confounding under the circumstances. Hadn't he been complaining about not being alone for the past 48 hours? 

"I looked up your name." 

He'd assumed she had gone, but she clearly he hadn't. He frowned, and turned fully. Tenel Ka stood in the archway into the chamber beyond, her hair in a copper braid over her shoulder, her face passive again. 

"What name?" He asked despite himself. 

"Ren. The one you said your grandfather should keep." 

The one that he said his grandfather should keep, and the one that he had also said should be looked up in the old Mandalorian tongue. Ren hadn't done that yet. He hadn't had time or opportunity, truly. 

"So?" 

"Do you want to know what I found out?" and her lips curled up into a smile as if she were having fun with having drawn his interest. 

"I don't care, you can tell me or not." 

"Say please, Ren." 

"I already said I don't care, and you can tell me or I will look it up myself later," he snapped. "I'm not saying please for something. You're all the most frustrating people in the entire galaxy." 

Tenel Ka's lips turned up in a smirk, for her, and she shrugged, turning to leave. 

"Kriff. Fine. Please, whatever. You're dying to tell me and I'd hate for you to leave unfulfilled." 

"That's not why I'm leaving unfulfilled," she threw back, but she was back to looking at him again. "Love." 

"I'm not your love, and I already said -"

"No, that's what it means. Ren: It means love in the old mandalorian tongue." 

Ren truly didn't know what he had expected. He had agreed to keep the name because it felt, more than anything else that he carried outside of perhaps his lightsaber, like something that was his. Perhaps it was Hux's fault, because he had always shortened it - preferring Ren to the longer Kylo Ren. But Ren had also been what the Knights had called themselves, and they had not cared much about love. The Mandalorian language had almost certainly not been consulted in the naming of the group. 

"How -?"

"I can send you the dictionary if you wish. It's an archaic form of the language, not one used in the day to day."

"It's what Grandfather said I should look up. The Mandalorian words." 

Tenel Ka raised her eyebrows. "Then this must have been what he meant," she said softly, and her lips pulled up. "Your grandfather asked you to keep a name that means love," she shrugged. "If that does not tell you much of what you should know about his intentions then there may be no hope for you." 

"You're never subtle are you?" He turned to look at her. 

"I'm often subtle, but I would say your grandfather was not. At least not in this." Although her face gave none of it away, the tone of her voice seemed to be amused. "I'll tell the others that you are in your room," she concluded as the door opened and he heard it click, and he was left alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name idea came from Behind the Name, where Ren is listed from the Japanese meaning Love. And I decided to run with it.


	7. Anakin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *hangs head* 
> 
> Guys. Me and writing have been on the outs the past um *looks at calendar* five months. The good news is that I do actually have edited chapters I can post, which I'm going to try to do. The other good news, is that I'm more than halfway done now. The bad news is I still have quite a bit to write. 
> 
> I'm going to have hope springs eternal here, because I want to see this through to the end. <3

If Ren's absence accomplished anything in the room, the tension had lessened at least. Anakin could feel it as Tenel Ka had walked out after his brother, and the two had disappeared together. Tenel Ka could handle Ren and so Anakin turned his attention back to the room. He could still see that Poe wasn't thrilled with any of the things that were happening currently. He was probably going to be less thrilled, but Anakin also felt they were on the right path. 

"Rey, Ren, and I are going after Snoke," he told the room after having put caf down. 

Poe's gaze turned to Anakin and his brows were furrowed together. "The Resistance needs -" 

"Jedi, I know," Anakin tried not to look unsympathetic to Poe's request, or ultimately his mother's, but after what they'd discussed last night it felt like the only way to move forward really. "And I hear you, but we've come too far on this. We need to keep moving forward and ultimately Snoke no longer being in charge of the First Order is a net gain for the Resistance." 

"We've got enough to move forward with, we think," Rey chimed in, and glanced over to her Uncle. 

"What are you working with?" this was Luke, and while his expression remained unchanged, he leaned forward into the conversation. 

Anakin met his Uncle's gaze. It was hardly the first time he'd had to explain to Luke that he was going off on a dangerous mission from which he might not come back, but it was the first time he'd done so with this Luke, and as so many moments reminded him this world was so much different. 

"We know the information that we got from Vjun," he began. 

"I thought you had determined that didn't relate to Snoke," Luke objected quietly.

"We had, but then we got new information," Rey leaned forward. Anakin realized suddenly that he was pretty certain her non-visible hand was under the table grasping Finn's. 

"From where?" This was Poe. 

Rey looked at Anakin, and he knew instantaneously what she was worried about. There was going to be pushback about what they'd found more than likely. Because the crux of everything was coming from Ren. They were trusting Ren that what they were being told about Vader's Holocron was true, and that what he was saying about how he had helped Snoke was also true. And whether or not these two things were related was a stretch even if it didn't require trusting Ren's information. 

"My Grandfather's holocron," Anakin selected his words to leave Ren out of it completely initially. That didn't mean they didn't have an impact around the room. He could feel it, with only Mara having very little in the way of any emotional reaction. Luke's was difficult to catch, but it was there, a subtle flicker underneath an otherwise calm surface. 

"Anakin Skywalker had a holocron?" 

Anakin shook his head at his Uncle's question. "No, but Vader did," he raised his gaze to his Uncle's.. 

"That's what we saw in that room," Zayna leaned forward over her mostly empty plate, her eyes sharp on Anakin's. "That triangle that…"

"That tried to pull me in," Anakin finished for her. "Yeah, that's the one."

"You didn't spend any time with -" Luke's concern was suddenly sharp. 

"No," Anakin turned back to his Uncle and shook his head. "No, I didn't. But Ren has." 

"So information from a Sith Lord coming through a baby Sith Lord is what we're building this whole case on?" Poe sounded incredibly done, and Anakin had to admit that he couldn't entirely blame him. It wasn't what he'd prefer himself. 

"Not entirely," Anakin replied calmly. "It's a piece of it." 

"It seems possible that the information we found on the Jedi temple on Vjun, and information that Ren told us he learned in Vader's holocron might be related," Rey sounded even more certain than she'd sounded the night before. It seemed that she had decided that if she was going to be a part of this, that she would step in completely. 

"What information?" Mara asked over a cup of caf. 

Anakin and Rey exchanged glances and it was Rey who answered. "There was a Master on Vjun that was looking for secrets to immortality, Anakin learned about him when we were in the temple as you'll recall."

"According to Ren, Vader and Palpatine were looking for a lost Jedi Master that had left for the Unknown Regions."

"You think it's the same Jedi Master," Luke's brows furrowed. 

"I think it's possible," Anakin nodded. "It's not a lot to go on, but it's something."

"How does this relate to Snoke?" Poe asked, still sounding as if he was ready to take off from the dining table and just give up on all of them.

"You think Snoke is the Jedi Master," Luke's eyes suddenly seemed very intent on Anakin. 

Anakin and Rey glanced at each other again and Anakin nodded. "It's a long shot, but Ren said that one of the first things Snoke demanded from him was healing in the Force."

"Healing in what way?" 

"Ren might be a better person to have this conversation with," Anakin admitted. "I'm just explaining what he explained to me and I'm not sure we have a full picture yet. But I believe it's where the Force is leading us." 

Poe's lips pressed together, but he didn't say anything. Anakin could feel the disapproval from him, but despite the fact that he and Poe had gotten along together well and really Poe had been his first friend in this new place, he didn't rightfully feel that he could give in to what Poe was asking of him. 

"I'm going back with Poe though," Finn said, and everyone turned to look at him. Anakin could see Rey didn't seem remotely surprised by this statement, but everyone else in the room did seem startle. "I know I'm not a real Jedi yet, or anything like that, but I've got a lightsaber and I've had some training now, and if they need someone to lead, someone who's trained with Luke Skywalker? Well, that's me." He glanced up at Poe and nodded. "So I'll go back with you, man. I think they've got this covered." 

"Who is going after Snoke then?" Zayna asked Anakin, leaning forward over the table. "You and Rey?" 

"And Ren," Anakin nodded. 

"I'll go with you," Luke said softly. 

Anakin turned to his Uncle, surprised by this statement, although maybe he shouldn't have been. It felt like _his_ Uncle, the one that he knew. It just felt less like _this_ Uncle, who he didn't know so very well. That made what he felt he needed to say, come much more difficult. 

He hesitated: "I don't know if that's the best idea." 

"You're going against someone who may have been a Jedi Master, and who certainly has command of the Dark Side," Luke raised his head. "You will need assistance." 

Anakin faltered, feeling suddenly like he had before Myrkr. His Uncle had wanted to lead the team and Anakin had known then that it needed to be him, but that knowledge had been obvious, the plan's success itself had been contingent on only having younger Jedi. It had been necessary that the Yuuzhan Vong believed that they had immature, incapable Jedi - Luke Skywalker would have been too much of a legend to make the journey and for them to believe that. It would have made the whole pretend of being captured unbelievable right from the get go. 

This plan had no element like that. In fact Anakin had no vision for what it looked like to get to Snoke. The knowledge that they had was still only pieces of a whole, but it had the same feeling that it needed to be him, Rey, Ren. He wasn't certain completely that it couldn't involve anyone else, but he knew absolutely that it had to be his siblings and him. And that as complicated a dynamic as they had, it had worked thus far. 

"I think Mom needs you more," this came from Rey, and Anakin released a breath in a soft whoosh. 

Luke's gaze shifted from Anakin over to Rey and he stared at her for a moment. 

"It's like this, Uncle Luke. Poe's come here asking for Jedi, and he thought he was coming for Anakin and I, but he's not. I'm sure of that. He didn't know Ren was going to be here - none of us could - but this mess with Ren and Snoke - it's his mess, but he needs support and he needs people who can help him walk through that. That's Anakin and I. It's not anyone else in this room."

"Rey, I don't think you underst-"

"No, I think I do," Rey shook her head. "Finn's going with Poe 'cause he needs a younger generation of Jedi and cause Finn's training to be that. Because he can give information about the First Order and their troops and how they train and how they move. He can do all that stuff because he was there and he understands them, but he respects the Resistance and the Force. Mom needs you, and she's needed you for a while now, but she needs to know that you care about what's going on with her. She needs her brother. And that's why I have to stay with Ren, and why Anakin has to also. He needs his siblings to care about what's going on with him. And what's going on with him? I don't know exactly; I just know it's Anakin and I that need to do this and that you are needed on the Resistance Base." 

"You won't be without Jedi, Poe," Mara said. "Luke and I will be coming with you and Finn as well." 

"I don't like the two of you alone with Ren," Luke protested. "We don't know what sort of training he's had with Snoke, and the only thing we know for certain is that he says he wants revenge against Snoke. Those are hardly lightside motives." 

"I've been in equally dangerous situations before," Anakin returned evenly. He couldn't help but notice that despite the protestations, his Uncle had not denied Mara's statement. "I've led a team of Jedi not much older than myself into situations way more dangerous than this. Rey's been training hard, and… this feels right. I've spent so much time meditating - I don't think we go back with any of you, even if we want to. We stay with Ren. Rey's right about that." 

"It doesn't mean we're trusting him absolutely without any call," Rey shook her head. "If anything I'm not certain I do trust him, but I agree with Anakin this seems like the right call, and also it feels right for you to go back to Mom - to work with the Resistance and with Finn." 

"Then I think we have what we came for," Zayna looked across at Anakin and their gaze met, and there was maybe a smile in her eyes behind the more serious expression. "We came for Jedi and I think we have kinda _the_ Jedi now, Poe. We're not going back empty handed." 

Poe didn't seem quite as at ease with this as Zayna did. Anakin suspected he'd had a different outcome in mind and he did feel slightly bad for disrupting Poe's vision of Anakin flying in his squadron. Anakin could have done it - Rey could have too - but that wasn't where they were needed right now. Other people could fly, possibly even Uncle Luke or Mara, but only Rey and Anakin could go with Ren after Snoke. 

"We will be sending a selection of the fleet with you as well," Tenel Ka's certain voice collected Anakin's attention.

"Ren?"

"He's in your chambers," she responded. The 'alone' was unspoken and Anakin resisted the urge to jump up and go to see him. They were going to have to start trusting him eventually, and if Tenel Ka had left him then Anakin her judgement could be trusted. 

"What do you mean?" Poe ignored the question about Ren and persisted on Tenel Ka's original topic of conversation Anakin suspected Poe would be perfectly happy if Ren were not entering into any part of the conversation. 

"I mean that I will send fighters with you to the Resistance. I cannot command the entire fleet to your aide, of course, we protect ourselves and the people will be unhappy if I step away from that, but I can send some and I will." 

Poe brightened for the first time that Anakin had noticed since he arrived. "That'd be good. Thank you." 

Anakin had at first pushed back against the idea of meeting with the Resistance fleet. He suspected that Poe was hoping that a talk from some of the other Resistance officers might change his and Rey's mind. There was also the question of Ren and whether or not taking him into the heart of the Resistance was a good idea, but Zayna had ultimately been the persuading force in favor of it. She had promised them additional information about the Unknown Regions, and up-to-date information on star-routes, and several other pieces of information that Rey and Anakin realized they shouldn't give up. 

So it was that they'd found themselves later exiting the Millennium Falcon together into a docking bay of a Formerly Republic affiliated starcruiser. 

Over a conversation of what to do with Ren, Ren had told Anakin that he would stay with him the entire time they were on the ship and that he had no interest in anything about the cruiser or the fleet. 

Anakin didn't know for certain if it were smart to believe him, and had discussed the matter over with Luke and Poe, but both had said that the fleet was only one, and was only a partial picture of what the Republic could offer. They would restrict the locations they could move within, and Ren would be able to send only limited pieces of information - should he be doing so. 

Tenel Ka had provided him with new clothing, simple trousers and a simple shirt and jacket not unlike the clothing worn by Poe or Finn or for that matter Anakin. He no longer looked much like Kylo Ren even if the story was that he was a Knight of Ren that had defected. 

Anakin wasn't certain how that story would hold when he stepped off of the ramp and his eyes caught sight of General Celchu. Someday, he supposed, he would get used to seeing people that he knew and knowing that they didn't know him. 

"Welcome aboard the Boldheart," Celchu stepped forward to greet them and then broke into a smile as he saw Luke and Mara. "It's good to see you again Skywalker. You too Jade, my wife is going to be jealous that she missed you." 

Mara's own smile was an equally quick thing, gone almost before it could be counted, but Anakin could tell they were back among friends. For himself he glanced around the ship, taking note of the similarities and differences to what he knew. 

It was a Corona Class Frigate, and it looked like what he was familiar with, but as like with the Resistance base there were these small things - the shape of a droid, or a poster for the crew - that would pull him out of what he knew and remind him that he wasn't in a world that was familiar to him. 

Introductions were made around the room. Celchu surprised them all by accepting Ren's introduction at face value. Instead he focused in on Anakin.

"Leia mentioned you," he nodded. "You look a lot like your father." 

"I've been told," Anakin offered a quick smile, a little tight. "It's good to see you here, sir." 

"You know me, then?" 

"My parents work with you at home," Anakin shrugged. "So yes, not well, but I've had the opportunity to work with you before." 

"Well it's good to have you here. I've heard you're quite the pilot." 

Anakin's smile warmed slightly. "Not as good as Jaina, my sister - she flies with Rogue Squadron at home - but I'm good enough." 

"I wish we were getting the opportunity to test that, but I've heard you've got your own mission." 

Anakin could not tell if there was any judgement in the statement, but he figured it didn't do any good to put some in there if there wasn't any intended so he decided to treat it as if it were judgement free. "Rey, Ren, and I, yeah," he nodded. "We're glad for the opportunity to resupply here though before we head off." 

Tycho nodded. "We'll do a briefing at 400, if you'll join us." 

Rey responded with a nod of her head. "We'd be glad to, sir." 

With that introduction completed and the invitation given, the group began to disperse a bit. Luke and Mara followed Tycho. Poe disappeared into the ship with Finn and Rey following him, and that left Anakin and Ren and Zayna with the _Falcon_. Ren had glanced around the bay and then stalked back into the _Falcon_. 

Anakin knew he was intended to watch him, and he frowned, just not certain exactly how to keep an eye on him at every moment. If they didn't trust him why had they brought him onto a Resistance ship anyway? Probably he should not leave him alone for too long. There were ways to call out or send signals on the ship, and while Anakin didn't think that Ren had any intention of doing this - he did think that he couldn't risk it under the circumstances. He swallowed a sigh and with a shrug towards Zayna he headed back up the loading dock into the freighter. 

It was three hours later, Anakin and Ren found themselves wandering through the labyrinth of the ship's passageways trying to find the debriefing space. Ren muttered something about the layout of First Order ships being significantly more logical to this and Anakin largely choose to ignore his mutterings. It might be true, it might not be, and regardless it was just complaining - it didn't solve the problem of getting to the debriefing room on time. 

It was mostly on time, just a few minutes after the 400 mark they'd been given when they finally found it. It wasn't dissimilar to the Resistance room Anakin had spoken with his mother and Poe in, but it was almost certainly more high tech, which made sense as Anakin was pretty certain this was a newer ship. All of the expected people were in there, and Anakin and Ren found a place near the door, their backs to the wall, and their eyes on the front of the room. 

As they entered Tycho looked up from where he'd been speaking with Mara and his eyes lit on Ren for what seemed to be longer than before. But Anakin might have been imagining it for the General then called the meeting to order. 

"We're going to be jumping to meet the Resistance fleet during the next shift cycle," the General stood up and pulled up a star chart. "In the meantime, we've gathered some new information and some new allies. Commander Dameron has met with them and we have here Finn, who is training to be a Jedi. The Jedi Luke Skywalker, whom many of you know," a murmur moved through the military people in the room. "And Mara Jade, who is both a freelance intelligence operative, and trained in use of the Force. Also with us are Rey, Anakin, and Ren." 

Anakin noted that he hadn't used their last names, but there wasn't much time to wonder at any of it because Tycho went straight into the information briefing, including details about Ren, and a few more details about the fleet. Anakin noticed that some of those details were sparse - timing and location details in particular - and he suspected that was a purposeful choice on the General's part. Afterall, even if he didn't know who Ren was, there was the part where he had defected. So too, had Finn for that matter, and in general the fewer people knew ahead of time about particular operations the less likely it was that something leaked to the wrong people. 

"We've also gotten intelligence that General Armitage Hux is no longer with the First Order fleet." 

Ren's head snapped up at this, but Anakin wasn't certain if anyone else in the room noticed it. They all noticed when he spoke up in his low, determined tone: "Where is he?" 

General Celchu turned his gaze to the back corner where Anakin and Ren were currently sitting. For a moment he hesitated and then he shook his head. "We don't know for certain, only that intelligence suggests the First Order fleet is being led by someone else."

"General Reige probably," Ren returned to that. 

"What makes you believe that?" Celchu asked, clearly somewhat skeptical of the information, but not discarding it out right. 

"Because he'd be the obvious choice," this was Finn. He was looking equally curiously at Ren, but he'd stepped forward slightly. "Ren's right, if Hux isn't in control anymore, then this guy is his obvious replacement. Question is if Hux isn't in control why not?" 

"Maybe they didn't like how he took care of Starkiller," Poe suggested curtly. 

"If they were going to punish him for Starkiller, they would have done that a long time ago," Ren shook his head. "And they did," he paused. "I mean, that's what I heard anyway. If Reige is in charge, you need to adjust what you expect from the First Order. He's going to be more strategic, and willing to take more time. Even if the Supreme Leader pushes him. Hux is logical and devoted, but he's also passionate, and at times it pushes him further than he ought to take on. Reige is more like Thrawn in personality." 

Anakin was not alone in watching Ren through all of this. The removal of Hux from the equation of the First Order fleet seemed to have opened a floodgate of information -- more than they'd gotten since they had been having conversations on Hapes. 

"What else can you tell us?" 

"You don't have any intelligence on what actually happened to Hux?" 

"No," Tycho seemed annoyed at the return of the question. "We simply know he's not leading the fleet any more." 

Anakin was half convinced Ren was trying to pull pieces from Tycho's mind, but his brother seemed to gather himself and he nodded. "If Reige is in charge he's going to probably separate the fleet and go after key supply installations for the Resistance," Ren told them certainly. "It's not dissimilar to what Hux would have done, but they'll go about it differently. Reige will want intelligence beforehand, so you have the opportunity to counter that intelligence search with misinformation of your own, if that's the sort of thing that's useful to you." 

"It might be," Tycho glanced over at Mara and she acknowledged the glance with the tiniest of shrugs that really only tilted her head just an inch or two. "If you've time before you leave I'd like to sit a couple of our intelligence ops down with you, Ren." 

"We need to leave soon," Ren's voice carried the urgency that he felt. 

"We do, but it'll be after the next sleep cycle," Anakin spoke up pointedly. "We need to refuel not just our ships." 

"Very good, then after this, Ren." 

Ren's lips pressed together, but he nodded, an easy acquiesce to the request he'd been given. Far easier than what Anakin would have expected from him under the circumstances. As they were dismissed, Anakin joined Ren and Celchu in the room, along with a handful of other Resistance operatives that Anakin didn't recognize, and Finn. Celchu wasted no time in giving Ren a thorough debriefing asking question after question about the First Order, protocols, and what he knew about the command structure. 

As best as Anakin could tell, Ren was answering accurately. It wasn't impossible that his brother was hiding something from him in the Force, misdirecting or just very good at lying, but Finn also kept nodding at most of it. At times Celchu would look over at Finn and he'd shrug and note that he didn't have the knowledge to deny or confirm but it seemed reasonable. Throughout the process though, Ren seemed to continue being anxious and edgy, and even though he appeared to be telling the truth, Anakin could tell he didn't want to be there. 

They concluded the briefing and Anakin and Ren headed back towards the _Falcon_. Anakin was quiet as they walked, uncertain exactly how to thread together the ideas of questions that were there in the back of his mind. 

"We should leave for the Citadel now." 

This demand from Ren was spoken, low, but insistent and Anakin turned his head towards his brother. 

"We need more of a plan than we have," he pointed out quietly. 

"We need to leave now." 

"We're refuelling the ship, and we're going to rest first," Anakin pointed out again. "We talked about this Ren, what's changed?" 

"I just feel like we need to be going now," Ren persisted. 

His head was up, shoulders straight, he was significantly taller than Anakin, but Anakin held his ground. In a fair fight, they could probably match each other. Maybe. Regardless, it didn't matter, running in without any plan didn't typically work out that well and that was something he felt Ren ought to know. Probably did. 

"What's changed?" Anakin persisted with his question.

Ren didn't say anything, but Anakin could feel his shift in the Force as they reached the freighter. Anakin frowned, and didn't say anything as they walked up into the ship. It wasn't something that he needed to have out in front of the entire Resistance battleship, but at the same time, he couldn't help but feel that there was a conversation there to have. Rey wasn't there when they returned, and Anakin strongly suspected that she was with Finn, wherever that might be, so he turned to Ren instead. 

"Look, if you've got a plan - there's something we can do, specifically? Tell me." 

Ren's eyebrows drew together over dark eyes and he didn't speak immediately. When he finally did, it was to repeat what he'd said before. "I just feel that we need to go now. It feels important that we leave now for the Citadel." 

"It feels important, but we have no working plan for what we're going to do when we get there," Anakin said. "I'm not getting the same sense of importance, and I'm going to guess that because Rey isn't here yelling at us to go, that she isn't either." 

"She's more interested in the Traitor than ending Snoke," Ren pointed out dryly.

"You should probably call him by his name," Anakin returned equally dry. "Afterall, your sister seems to be pretty interested in him and calling her boyfriend Traitor isn't going to make for happy family gatherings." 

Ren barked a laugh at this. "As if our family is ever going to have 'happy family gatherings'." 

"You did once, didn't you?" Anakin pointed out. 

This silenced Ren, and the two stood in the open cargo hold. 

It was something about Hux, maybe. Something Ren knew that Anakin didn't? Something that somehow he hadn't already shared in the meeting with Tycho. It was possible, Anakin supposed, that there was something wound up in Hux that would mean Ren knew they needed to go sooner. A cool creep of fear that maybe Ren was walking them into a trap crept up and threatened to destroy the faith Anakin was trying to have. 

In theory though, he'd given a good deal of information about the First Order to the Resistance. Finn and corroborated much, if not all of it. And much of the rest of it he'd been able to say it made logical sense. Why would he give all of that information to the Resistance if he wasn't at least tangentially on their side? He couldn't prove it though, and at the moment fear was certainly threatening to take precedence. 

"Tomorrow," he said. "We'll rest tonight, and then tomorrow bright and early we'll head to a gray port for supplies, and then towards the citadel." 

Ren's jaw tightened but he nodded his head. "I'll be in my bunk," he said curtly and disappeared. 

Anakin sighed, and rubbed his temples fighting away the doubt of wondering if he was really doing the right thing here, or if he was about to get himself and Rey killed. 

Rey had returned, and he'd warmed up dinner and was eating it on the loading ramp of the _Falcon_ when Zayna approached with a young man who was probably about Poe's age, maybe a little younger. 

"Anakin," Zayna grinned. "I wanted you to meet my brother, Lt. Rogan Ardellian." 

Anakin got to his feet, wiping his hand on his flight suit before he held it out for the man with Zayna. He was about Anakin's height, with dark wavy hair and skin that was a shade darker than Zayna's. 

"Hey, Anakin," Rogan greeted him warmly. "Zayna's mentioned you a time or two. It's a pleasure."

"Likewise," Anakin grinned back, wondering what Zayna had actually mentioned considering that it seemed like most of the time she referred to him it was to grumble about Jedi getting involved in things. "She said you're a pilot with the Resistance." 

"That's right," Rogan affirmed. "I was with the Republic before that, like Poe, and frankly like a lot of the folks here, but the Republic wasn't really paying a lot of attention to rising threats, so I ended up here." 

"Which one of you first," Anakin looked between them. "Did you pull Zayna in, or did she pull you." 

The siblings looked at each other and Rogan started laughing. Zayna rolled her eyes. 

"Would you believe me if I said, neither of us?" Rogan grinned. 

"What?" Anakin looked at Zayna.

"It's true," Zayna was smiling now. "So, he was with the military and he ended up getting recruited that way."

"Poe, actually -" Rogan interrupted her. "I've heard you know him."

"Yeah, Poe was the pilot that picked me up." 

"Yeah, he's a good guy," Rogan agreed. 

"I got into it on my own," Zayna shrugged. "Intelligence found me." 

"Cause you're trouble with the net." 

"Yeah, yeah," Zayna shrugged. "Just cause I can slice into your private messages, you think I'm trouble."

"I think that's the definition of it," Rogan shook his head. 

"But you both ended up here," Anakin tilted his head. "How did you find out?"

"We ended up on the same ship for a mission about five months ago," Rogan shrugged. "To say we were a little surprised is probably an understatement." 

"That's crazy, and sort of fantastic," Anakin laughed.

"I guess we've both got the same genes and all that," Rogan chuckled. "But I'm interrupting your food, so I won't stick around," he glanced at the food that Anakin had discarded. "Still, I'm glad to meet you, Solo." 

"Same," Anakin nodded. "I hope we can talk some more sometime." 

"We will I think. Good luck with your mission." 

"Thanks," Anakin responded. 

"I'll be along," Zayna told her brother. "I want to stick around and keep Anakin from his food for a while longer." 

"Thanks for that," Anakin raised an eyebrow at her. 

"You can eat in front of me I won't mind," Zayna crossed in front of him, and sat down cross-legged on the other side of the rations pack. "I've already eaten, so it's not rude."

"I think it still might be rude," Anakin retorted, but he sank back down to where he'd been sitting and picked the food back up again. "Thanks for bringing your brother by. I'm glad to meet him." 

"Yeah, I figured you might want to," Zayna looked out across the bay, the dozens of fighters and the on-duty Resistance officers and crew that were among them. "Do you think you're going to be able to pull this off?" 

Anakin took a bite of the bread that was there and turned to look at her. It was a loaded question and of course he didn't really know the answer to it. There were so many risks that he'd gone around in his head with that he knew the possibility of failure was high. There were three of them, and they were pretty powerful together - or they had the possibility of it - but he didn't know how that was going to work out in practical terms. They didn't exactly work together amazingly, and he couldn't fix that on his own. 

"Yeah. I think so." 

It didn't feel like enough, honestly. Anakin wanted to be able to answer something a lot more intentional and certain than that. He wanted to be able to say we've got this, Snoke is going to come down, and we'll come back victorious. But maybe partially his own history made him hesitate from saying that. There was in the back of his mind the acknowledgement that he'd ended up nearly dead in this timeline. He still didn't know how he got here, but one thing felt very likely - that his time at home had ended either way. He knew that he'd been dealing with multiple injuries. Not incurable with the appropriate technology and healing capability, obviously, but incurable for where he was and he couldn't imagine that it had gotten so much better when he left. 

"I think I'm here for a reason," he told her, looking over at meeting her brown eyes with an even gaze. "Maybe that's what everyone wants to think, but… I think what I was doing at home was finished. And now I'm here, and no one really has an explanation for it, but I think we're on the right path Ren, Rey, and I: I think we have to try to do this." 

Zayna was quiet. She seemed thoughtful, maybe unusually so for her considering that typically she seemed to have a witty jab for him. "You know, I'm not certain I buy into all that Force nonsense,"she tilted her head as she looked at him. "The whole destiny leading us feels like a lot of weight for anyone to carry and maybe I don't want that so I'm rejecting it for everyone else too, but you being here is really different. It's nothing anyone could have predicted so maybe you're right." 

Anakin couldn't help his lips turning up in a small smirk. "You've gotten soft, Zayna." 

"I'm sorry?" She turned around, raised an arch eyebrow at him. "I've what?"

"On Jedi, and Force nonsense," Anakin kept smirking. "You're getting soft. When I first met you it was like you were actively hostile towards it, and now you're like 'maybe you're right'." 

She rolled her eyes soundly, which was what Anakin was expecting, but she shrugged. "Maybe I've just seen you do some things and decided that I needed to readjust my expectations." 

"Isn't that what I said," Anakin laughed. "You're coming around." 

"Not around, just, there are hills to die on and hills to go over." 

Anakin grinned, and dropped it. There was truth to that, anyway. "Are you going to be part of the mission that Mom's putting together?"

"Honestly, I don't know," Zayna seemed glad to have the subject change. "Maybe. I haven't seen my assignment yet, but I'd say there's a good chance I'll be working with systems around." 

Anakin nodded, his thoughts turning to his mom. He knew that she'd sent Poe after them expecting all of them to come back. He didn't know what she'd think when she realized that they hadn't. He poked at the last bit of vegetable on the plate with his fork before picking it up and putting it in his mouth. 

"If you see Mom, will you tell her that we're going to come back when we can?" He tilted his head to turn towards her. "I know that she was hoping for all of us, but I believe this is important - necessary even - and that we need to do it."

Zayna raised an eyebrow. "You realize you Jedi sound kind of like nonsense half of the time." 

"See, there's the skepticism I know and expect from you," Anakin laughed, releasing some of the worry about how the mission was going to go and whether he'd be able to follow through on that promise. He was planning on it, and that was the best that he could offer his mother at this point in time. He had to believe it was possible for them to defeat Snoke. If he didn't, then he wasn't certain they stood a chance. 

"I'd hate to leave you thinking that I'd somehow come around to thinking Jedi were sane," Zayna smirked back at him. 

"You know, that's almost more of a relief than you thinking I make sense," Anakin chuckled. "Just tell Mom that I hope what we're doing will matter for the Resistance." 

"That I can do," Zayna's smirk faded into a smile. "Just -" she hesitated as if she was going to say something else, and instead shook her head. "May the Force be with you, Anakin Solo."


	8. Rey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> June, July, August, September! Yes, let's update four months later! Guys, I know it's been forever, and I'm grateful for everyone who has left comments, and been encouraging. This year has been a super struggle for me writing wise, and sometimes that just happens, and I realize it, but I really really want to finish this work - I've come this far. <3 
> 
> So again, thanks for your comments and support, and let's get going.

Laying in the depths of the ship Rey had to admit that she already missed the quiet shades of morning dawn across her pillow as she woke up. Instead there was the dim light of electronic running lights that had been programmed to come on gradually at a certain time on the chronometer. For a moment she lay still without moving, and then she turned, sliding an arm across the warmth of the body next to hers. Finn stirred, but still slumbered, and Rey let herself stay beside him as she waited for him to pull himself back to the land of the waking. 

They would leave today, and she didn't know what that would mean for either of them. There was so much that could happen and they would be apart - not even able to help each other or go after the other should something happen that they would need to. She breathed out, pressed her lips to Finn's chest, and then breathed in the scent and the feel of him. He was beautiful, this man that had stumbled into her life so unexpected and yet so strong and compassionate and funny and caring. She'd thought he would leave like all the rest, so how had she come to this moment of knowing that he was leaving, and being definably all right with him doing so? 

It was different here. She knew that. It wasn't that he was leaving _her_. He was leaving to fight in a way that he could do while she fought in her own way elsewhere. They were both on paths that made logical sense and that she had to believe would lead them back into the same place even if part of her wanted to tell Anakin that they would be on their own - she was going with Finn. 

"Mmm, you're tickling me," Finn's voice rumbled a low rumble, and she couldn't help but smile as she glanced up to his face in time to see his eyes flicker open and take in her face. "Your breath is like a feather on my chest." 

"That's not something I've ever been told before," Rey smirked. 

"I should hope not, 'cause if you've been putting your breath on other people's chests - you've not been putting your breath on other people's chests have you? Do we need to talk?" 

"Quit the jealous act," Rey leaned forward to kiss him. "Just your chest. That's the only one that matters." 

He hummed through the kiss and when she pulled back, his arms were there around her lower back to pull her back down towards him. Rey could feel warmth spreading through her body, the sheer contentment and delight of feeling one hundred percent at home. It was the same feeling she'd had on Hapes. But this was on a Resistance cruiser, not on a palace on a mysterious and somewhat hidden palace. It was a decidedly less romantic setting, but that didn't lessen the way she felt when he wrapped her up in him. 

"How long do we have?" he murmured, untangling enough from her lips to ask the question. 

Rey sighed, but not allowing herself to be put off, she slid her leg down his, between his two and enjoying that she elicited a sigh of his own. "I told them to set the lights on early light mode, an hour before." 

"Rey, we should get up, you need to dress and get food before you eat." 

"Who needs food?" She leaned down, teasing his lower lip gently. "And there are better ways than caf to wake up." 

"You've asked for this," he murmured, before pushing up to meet her lips enthusiastically with his own. 

Despite her statement, they still rushed breathlessly for caf and a hot sandwich with sausages about a half hour later. With a sandwich in one hand, and caf in the other, Finn and Rey made their way towards the bay. Rey was trying not to think about the fact that this would be the last time she would see Finn for a length of undetermined time. She didn't know how long it would take them to find Snoke, and couldn't even say for certain that this wasn't some sort of insane trap that her brother was leading them into. Nor was there any guarantee about Finn coming back from the war on his end. They were headed in opposite directions with only hope that they would come back together on the other side of it. 

"I could come with you," he said as they reached the door. 

Rey stopped and turned towards him so they were standing just under the arch of it together. There was a sort of anxiousness in his posture suddenly and Rey wondered if it was echoed in her own posture. After all she could certainly feel some of that uncertainty herself. 

"You could, but I don't think that's where you need to be," she said the words slowly, as if she were trying them on for size, and maybe in a way she was. But she felt certain that the connection and pull she felt to Finn had more to do with the intimacy they had shared over the past few days and less to do with him needing to be with her because he was needed here in this mission. That was a challenge, she realized briefly. To not let her emotional longing, get mixed up in what was actually necessary for moving forward. She felt that this was right though. As much as she didn't want to admit it, she suspected that Anakin was right: This was a Solo problem. Even if her brother didn't want to call himself a Solo anymore they were needed here and Finn could do more work with the Resistance if he went with Poe and the others. She reached out and took Finn's hand. "I think the Resistance needs you with them." 

"You're still Resistance," he pointed out.

Her lips turned up in a smirk. "Not as much as you are." 

"I think going after the Supreme Leader of the First Order puts you soundly in the category of Resistance even if you don't have a title or squadron like Poe does."

She grinned and leaned forward to press a kiss to his lips. "Besides, this way you get to stay with Uncle Luke and keep training." 

"You need that too though," he pointed out.

"I've had some of it," Rey countered, trying to sound more confident than she really felt. She'd had some of it, sure, but she didn't feel ready to go up against Snoke. Then again, did any of them truly feel ready for that? Even her elder brother? It was just what needed to be done and they all knew that in their own ways. 

"I just wish we were doing this together, whatever 'this' is." 

"I know," Rey agreed, her hand dropping to brush the back of his even as she couldn't drop the sandwich she was holding. She scooted a little closer to him to let a lieutenant pass them in the hall, followed by a protocol droid. "I do too, but doing this with Ren and Anakin feels right. And Mom wants Jedi. And you count." 

"To throw your words back at you," Finn raised an eyebrow. "Not as much as you are. I didn't get through to the temple with you and Anakin."

"But you've had more training now," Rey shook her head. "You might if we were doing it today. Even if not, you'll have more still when we meet again. And we will meet again, I'm nearly certain of it." 

She wasn't as certain of it as she sounded, but she had the hope of it, as solid as the hope that her family would return for her someday. They hadn't, not exactly, but it had still come back around to her being with them again, hadn't it? She and Finn would come back to each other. "You just need to be careful not do anything too rash," she grinned up at him. 

"Me?" Finn looked mock surprised. "I should be telling you that." 

She stepped forward and kissed him again lightly on the lips, but with just a hint of wanting to linger longer. She did want to linger longer, longer and forever, but the galaxy was calling both of them. 

"You're the one who ran away from the First Order," she reminded him as she pulled back. "You've a history of doing rash things."

"Good things, brilliant things. Right things to do," Finn corrected her, but there was a smile on his lips as well and Rey was glad of it. 

She wanted to remember him smiling and joking with her. She wanted to carry that with her as she believed the two of them would go forward into their separate missions and come back out the other side to be able to really truly be together maybe for much longer. "The right thing to do indeed," she grinned. "Plus, you'll make my Mom happy when you show up with a lightsaber." 

"You make a good point," Finn chuckled. "A really good point. I hadn't thought of that."

Together they shared a laugh and then Rey's eyes turned to the _Falcon_. Finn would be with her mom, and in her own way she supposed she'd be with her dad, or he'd be with them in the form of the ship, and Chewie who was with them. She gazed at it for a moment and then turned her attention back to Finn. 

"I love you," he said earnestly. 

His warm brown eyes hadn't stopped gazing at her all this time and she couldn't help but want to hold onto that sense of being really seen. She hadn't been for her entire life, and for most of her life she hadn't wanted to be seen. Being seen would mean trouble, almost certainly, while being overlooked had meant being able to survive more easily. But then Finn had burst into her life, and she really couldn't think of any other way to put it. 

"I know," she responded, leaning forward to kiss him once more before she parted for the _Falcon_. 

The four of them were sitting in the cockpit as they said goodbye to the Resistance fleet a few moments later. Chewbacca in the co-pilot's chair, while Anakin and Ren sat behind the two of them, watching as Rey plugged in the coordinates for the nearest greyport. Ren had said it would be the nearest place to stop between here and Snoke. Rey hoped it wasn't going to prove to be a trap. It would be the obvious place to set one up - easily shrouded in the various smugglers and riff-raff they might find in a port like that. 

But there were supplies that the Resistance couldn't provide them with and she and Anakin had talked it over, deciding that it was worth the risk. They'd be prepared then. 

Rey just hoped they were prepared for anything that might await them there - particularly any betrayal that might pop up.

Anakin offered to take the helm for a bit, and so Rey gave it over, heading back towards the main passenger hold in the Falcon as Ren followed her. 

"We still need a plan," he stated flatly. 

"We do, so what ideas do you have?" Rey turned around to give her older brother a look. It was as if he hadn't been expecting her to turn that back to him and he frowned and shook his head with an almost imperceptible shrug. Rey buried a sigh. 

She was going to need to work with him, which would be a lot easier to do if she wasn't afraid that he was going to turn on them at the first earliest chance. It would also be easier if she felt any kinship with him at all. 

No, that wasn't quite true. She did feel kinship with him, and that was part of the problem. So much as she'd like to have left him behind, she recognized that he was the best chance the had of finding Snoke, if not the best chance of defeating him. But even that seemed likely that he could help with. Snoke was powerful. She and Anakin could sense that, and Ren knew it better than anyone. 

She started a cup of caf and then turned back around to him. "Do you remember the day I was kidnapped?" 

It was a complete change of subject from what they'd been talking about before and the surprise showed in Ren's eyes as he glanced up before that surprised was shielded under a glare. "I don't want to talk about that," he growled at her, sliding into the seat in front of the game table and staring at it intently, as if the game would appear and he would be able to make sense of playing it when it did. 

A flare of irritation bubbled up and she turned around to reach for a tumbler to pour caf into. "You know there are a lot of things I don't want to talk about, or think about, but I still do it. I was the one who was actually kidnapped and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why, and then I spent a lot of time with Uncle Luke, trying to figure out what happened, and I'm just asking you what you remember." 

He looked up at her then, and their eyes met, and for a moment he was silent and she thought it would be a wonder if they ever managed to get a plan put together between the three of them. Ren wasn't talking, Anakin was hyper optimistic, and Rey just - well she was trying to be realistic about what their probabilities were. 

She opened her mouth and tried again, masking irritation as much as he felt she could. "Look, whatever happened, both of us were there, and I don't know - I think we need to talk about it."

"Why?" Ren looked up at her. "What does it have to do with what we're doing right now?"

"Maybe nothing, but how do you know it doesn't have anything to do with what we're doing right now? I don't have a choice about whether or not I think about it. Did you consider that?" 

"You think I don't think about it?" Ren snapped with enough force that she could feel the shift in the room itself through the Force. "I think about it every day. How I lost you because I was trying to play the hero." 

"That's not what happened -"

"It's completely what happened. I sat out to do something I had no business getting involved in, and I left you alone. For all I know that entire incident was arranged to prey on my interest in helping people, in justice being done," he spat the word out as if it were distasteful. "I blamed myself, Breha." 

It was one of the first times he'd referred to her by her old name, the one that had come from before, even if Rey had been used as a nickname too. Her mother constantly used it with her, but Ren hadn't. It almost seemed as if he felt pain at doing so. "I blamed myself, and everyone blamed me."

"I doubt seriously that's the case," she protested to the end of breaking up his tirade. 

"You weren't there, and you don't know. I blamed myself, and I tried to make up for it, by becoming a Jedi - the best Jedi in the galaxy - but that was never going to be me. Everyone expected it from me, but I couldn't do it. And I knew they thought all of it was my fault. You don't understand what it was like all those years." 

"I don't," Rey pushed off the counter and came to stand before him, steady even though her heart was pounding wildly. "You're right. I don't. But you don't know what it was like living on a desert planet with no idea who I was or where I had come from. Just some faint notion that one day my family would come for me so I had to stay safe and be strong."

"It's not the same."

"No. It isn't," Rey exclaimed. "It isn't the same. You had family and support all right there, no matter what you thought they believed you were responsible for. I. Had. Noone. And I didn't turn to the dark side." 

"You didn't even know about the Force, or the Dark Side, it was all a blank slate to you -" Ren looked furious. 

"Yes, it was all a blank slate until I left Jakku, until I knew about the Dark Side and the Force and it calling me, and you know what? It wouldn't matter what happened to me. Someone could kill my father in front of me and I still wouldn't turn to the Dark Side."

Ren reached out and Rey reacted instinctually, the Force meeting between them in a surge of power, that if either of them had been thinking clearly, would have been considered a bad idea on a starship of any sort. 

"Hey." 

Anakin's voice interrupted them, sounding terse and Rey could feel Ren backing away, slowly, in case she were to take the advantage over him in that moment. She stared at him icily and then retreated as well. Anakin's hand was on his lightsaber and he was staring warily between them where he'd entered the room. 

"Who has the controls?" Rey asked, her eyes still on Ren. 

"Chewie," Anakin's response was measured. "I was going to talk to Ren about what we should expect when we get to the Citadel."

Rey glanced at Anakin. She suspected heavily that he had not been coming to talk about any such thing, but perhaps it wasn't the worst idea. Ren's arrogance and dismissive attitude infuriated her. He was whiny, and egotistical, and the fact that he seemed to think his life had been so hard that the only possible explanation had been the Dark Side. He had killed their father. 

Her jaw tightened and she nodded, turning away from both of her brothers to reach for the caf. "I'll check in with Chewie," she told Anakin, leaving Ren seething behind her. Her younger brother could deal with it if he wanted to. There was still a part of her that would like to dump Ren in space and go without him. 

Chewie rumbled a question as she walked into the cockpit and Rey snorted in response as she took her seat in the pilot's chair. "He's a child," she responded to Chewie. "He acts as if he had it so bad. He got to grow-up with Mom and Dad - not on the middle of nowhere with no memory of who his parents really were and only the potential promise that they would return for him. And what does he do with it?" She groused. 

She knew it was possible that she was being unfair, but really it felt completely fair. Ren had turned down any possibility of responding to her questions, and they had been reasonable questions - her trying to piece together what happened that day as best as she could. Mara had promised to look into some of her sources, and maybe it didn't _really_ matter, except that Rey wanted to know. She wanted answers as to why she had been taken, and then, conversely why she had been left. Had that somehow been the plan all along? And if so - to what end? 

If she hadn't been required to take the Falcon with Finn that day, would she have ever found her family? From all accounts, including that of her mother, they had believed her dead or lost forever. They hadn't been looking for her at all. Without the serendipity of that moment - or, as her training from her Uncle helpfully filled in for her - without any intervention of the Force, would she have ever rediscovered them? Would they have ever come for her? That seemed unlikely. 

"I don't know how Anakin can forgive him," she frowned. "He seems to just - it's easy for him." 

Chewie rumbled.

"No, I know he didn't see it, and he wasn't there," Rey sighed, and she closed her eyes. It still half felt like a failing that she couldn't just forgive him, but - "I don't think I'm unreasonable to think that he ought to show some remorse for what he did to Dad before I can forgive him, is it? He has hardly earned it." 

Her life had been legitimately difficult on Jakku. Everything that Ren said felt like whining. Even when she tried to pull herself out and sit in his perspective, it still felt that way. If she'd lost him - she could imagine that she would have blamed herself. After all, to a certain extent even though she had been the one lost she did still blame herself. If she'd stayed put… if she had followed the instructions she'd been given as a very young girl. If she hadn't believed the woman who had told her she needed to go away with her.

When she tried to think back to that woman she got very little more than a shadow in her mind. And even Luke hadn't really been able to help her get anything more. 

"I think she suppressed memories," Rey frowned, and opened her eyes, leaning forward and putting her elbows on her knees. "I mean, maybe even removed them. It's like they aren't there to find. Some of it is, but some of it isn't, and all I wanted was for him to give me what he remembers - and it hasn't been taken from him - not like it was from me. How is that so much to ask?" 

Was it painful? Sure. But it was pain that she'd had to walk through on her own. He would have had their parents, Chewie, Winter, their Uncle, Mara, and others, who could have helped guide him through it. It was no good reason to turn to the Dark Side or to work to destroy everything that their parents had fought to secure. 

"I don't understand," she sighed. 

Chewie's hand came over on her own, and she could feel the strength of it, knowing that there was tremendous power in the Wookiee's arm and hands, that there were retracted claws that were strong enough and sharp enough to carry them through the giant trees of Kashyyyk. Memories of being on Chewie's planet when she was a small girl were there, but memories of that day - they were still so vague. 

"I would have given anything to keep what he kept. I wouldn't have turned to the Dark Side or killed our father if the situation had been reversed." 

Chewie rumbled a simple agreement and Rey repressed a second sigh. She didn't know what she was hoping for from this conversation. She suspected that peace with her brother was still a long way away, and maybe more so if he didn't apologize which he hadn't really yet done. Anakin seemed to be able to take that and move forward with it, but Rey was struggling. And the excuse that Anakin hadn't been there and hadn't seen it, could really only be recognized as what it was - a justification. This truly did nothing to improve her mood. 

"He had what I wanted," she said aloud, even though it really was similar to what she'd said before. "He didn't even appreciate it." 

The words settled in the cockpit and Chewie let them rest there. It wasn't really what Rey wanted to spend that time traveling in her own mind, and her thoughts wandered towards what Anakin and Ren were discussing, but she didn't want to share space with him - not right now. She was still angry with him, and frustrated by his dismissal of her request which had seemed reasonable. Her mind seemed to be wandering in circles, and ultimately she found herself reaching for one of Luke's meditation techniques to try to calm herself and create clarity in the moment. 

The past had to float away, as did her wanderings of what she could find in the future. Instead she found the current moment. The vibration of the ship under her body, the feeling of catapulting through hyperspace so quickly. These things were surrounding her right now. They were on their way to the next step in their journey but for the time being they were surrounded by the galaxy, by the ship that had been her father's, by their connection to each other in the Force. 

As she pulled out of the meditation to the sound of the alert that they would be dropping hyperspace soon, she was slightly more calm, even if she knew there was still underlying annoyance at Ren. Maybe there always would be. It was difficult enough for her to think about everything she had missed without adding onto it the thought of how Ren had thrown it all into the hyperspace lane.

She requested landing clearance, transponding one of the codes Mara had given her before she left. It wouldn't necessarily keep someone off their tail if they were looking, but it would hopefully keep from attracting attention seeing as how the _Falcon_ was not the least known ship in the galaxy. 

They were given a docking port, and Rey flew the freighter into the spot, Chewie helping her without any words passing between them. Perhaps that had more to do with the fact that for once the _Falcon_ didn't seem destined to put all of its quirks on display, but maybe it was equally the fact that they'd started to get used to working with each other. She liked the notion of that and as she unstrapped her crash harness, she turned to Chewie and gave him a quick smile. 

"Thanks, Chewie," she added, the smile fading slightly into something that felt more apologetic. 

*It's all right*, he rumbled as he stood also. 

Rey wasn't certain that it was, but the only way out was to keep moving in, and hopefully through, if her brother could be trusted at all, then maybe they'd all come out the other side. She had a good feeling about that, didn't she? 

She wished she had a good feeling about it anyway. 

Ren and Anakin were waiting near the ramp. Both were dressed similarly in dark trousers, boots, simple shirts, and basic brown jackets. In addition both had added cowls so it would be easy enough to hide their faces if necessary. Ren was running the edge of his across his fingers, turning it over with a sort of nervousness. 

Rey's eyes caught this for a moment and she frowned, pushing down her own nervousness that rose with his actions. 

"All right, we need to get supplies, and not linger," she told the other two. 

Anakin nodded. If he was aware of the tension she felt where Ren was concerned, he wasn't talking about it. "Information about the First Empire wouldn't go amuck either," he added. "If that's something we can get." 

"I probably can," Ren stopped running the cloth between his fingers. 

"Oh, sure, you think we're going to let you go off alone and meet with the First Order?" Rey raised an eyebrow. "Think again, Ren." 

Ren's gaze snapped up and his eyes narrowed. "What do you think I'm going to do? Why do you think I'm here?" 

"That's a great question, and I'm still not sure I know the answer to it. You say you want Snoke ended, but nothing about the First Order, and maybe you just want Snoke dead so you can take over for him." 

"That's nonsense," Ren snapped. "I've been with you all this time, and I've followed every one of your infantilizing rules. There has been someone with me at almost every moment, and yet you still think I'm interested in selling you out. Maybe you shouldn't be surprised if that's the choice I end up making." 

"Enough," Anakin stepped between them before Rey could respond. "All right enough. We've got a mission, the three of us, plus Chewie. It's to bring an end to the Supreme Leader, or whatever you call him. And the only way we're going to do that, is if we work together."

"Which is what I've been trying to do," Ren muttered defensively, his gaze still on Rey's face. 

"It is, and it's what we've all been doing. If we're sniping at each other and not trusting each other we're going to fall together, and none of us wants that." 

Rey pushed her lips together, but Anakin wasn't wrong. She might not trust Ren, but she did want them to succeed, and he was their best source of information on Snoke. 

"Let's get moving on the supplies," she decided the easiest way forward was to simply move forward. "The longer we're here, the more likely it is someone picks up on our scent."

"I agree with that," Anakin nodded, stepping back and pulling up the cowl over his head. "Ren and I will go after food stuffs and medical supplies, and you and Chewbacca can work on ship supplies, and anything else we might need. We'll meet back here on the ship and hopefully will have the opportunity to go further through a plan at that point in time."

"What about information on the First Order?" Rey pointedly did not look at Ren. 

Anakin frowned. "Keep your ears open, see if you can pick up anything. We'll do the same." 

For a moment it seemed that Ren might protest this plan, but he kept his mouth shut and instead raised his own cowl up so that all could be seen of his profile was the tip of his nose. "Fine, let's get moving."


End file.
